Beautiful devastation
Matt Harrison
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"Manufacturing #18" by Edward Burtynsky
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Filming the earth's scars
We have sacrificed vast portions of the Earth so we're able to travel to work alone in our cars. We have transformed humans into machines in the quest for cheap irons and wrinkle-free shirts. I think it's fair to say that when you pump gas, you're not thinking about the great swaths of the Earth that have been laid waste to bring oil to your car. Likewise, when you iron a shirt or a pair of pants, you generally don't wonder about the human toil that built this "labour-saving" device. Why is that? As Jennifer Baichwal's documentary examines, there's a great disconnect between our products and their relation to the planet. For decades, Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky's photography of "manufactured landscapes" - landscapes created through the processes of industrialization and globalization - has sought to reconnect us with those destructive processes. And like Burtynsky, Baichwal's film forces us to ask ourselves who are we in relation to the planet.
Acting as a sort of second lens, Baichwal's film mimics Burtynsky's photography by zooming in on abandoned ships oozing oil on the muddy banks of Bangladesh, allowing us a glimpse of humanity that is almost imperceptible amongst the detritus. At other times, her camera zooms out in order to capture the grand scale of such manufactured landscapes as the construction of China's Three Gorges Dam.
Perhaps the most compelling scene in the film is the opening shot. An uncomfortably long tracking shot steadily passes row upon row of Chinese factory
workers. The deliberate decision to move sideways through the factory creates a dizzying sensation as we seem to move forever without direction and without scale. The absence of voices makes it nearly impossible to distinguish human from machine except for the workers' curious stares. There is no way to tell how large the factory is, not until the camera is hoisted high above the floor and looks out lengthwise into the building, whose proportions stretch out into the horizon - the final still shot becomes a near-perfect representation of one of Burtynsky's own photographs.Just as we can't help but be humbled by the film, we are perversely left in awe of the beautiful devastation that Baichwal, through Burtynsky, has photographed. That unsettling feeling is meant to draw us into the film while at the same time presenting us with the hard truth of reality. "It's not a simple right or wrong, but it [the existence of these manufactured landscapes] needs a whole new way of thinking," Burtynsky says in a rare narrative moment.
Free from such distractions as discussions of Burtynsky's work in relation to modern art, the film allows the haunting social message to impress itself fully upon the viewer; it's a rare experience when our reconnection to the Earth's devastation is both beautiful and horrific.
Edward Burtynsky: Manufactured Landscapes
Directed by Jennifer Baichwal
November 17-23
ByTowne Cinema
| Film Review 101/Jennifer Baichwal's grabs our attention with Edward Burtynsky: Manufactured Landscapes but is anyone even listening? |
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The world is a frightening place...that's why we don't take a too close look at it. We all glaze our eyes over to the obvious and try to maintain the illusion in our heads that things are better than they really are. The environment? It's bad but do we really want to know *how* bad? Do we really want to know? More and more big business and our willful obliviousness erodes and ruins what we once called precious. The fact that we need docs like this to prop up a mirror before our indifference is worrisome in the extreme.
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Pedro Eggers
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