Manufactured Landscapes (2006, Canada, Jennifer Baichwal)



Wherein Ben reveals the mind and I revel in the heart of this great documentary



Ben Begins:

Only about the photographer just enough to provide some explication of the photographs themselves, this is a movie about the photographs themselves. I couldn't help but flash on Tarkovsky's incorporation of still life paintings in his motion pictures. Regardless of the subject matter of the painting or photograph, exactly how should the cinematography present it? In the case of Tarkovsky, if I am projecting it correctly on the screen that is my memory, he relies principally on close-up and slow pan. In the present film, the director (a woman whose name I do not know) mostly uses the close-up and the zoom-out, beginning with with what will be revealed as a background detail after pulling away to show the whole, framed, gallery-large photograph. This technique served the subject matter of the photographs well. Whereas Tarkovsky wants to take you from without, right into the pigment of the paint as it was determined by the private psychology of the painter, the director of ML wants to take you from within, out into the larger world from whence the photograph itself was drawn. I want to emphasize this camera movement as an act of recontextualization rather than simply an attempt to convey a sense of the scale of the subject matter in the photographs. While it may be true that the scale of the subject matter and the sheer size of the gallery-large photographs themselves is what epitomizes their impact, scale is not the essense of this impact. This is to assert that the "landscapes" scale is but the quantitative expression of the qualitative matter of them being "manufactured." This documentary is "true to the spirit" of Edward Burtynsky's photographs insofar as both refuse to make a fetish of scale, concentrating instead on the social processes producing the transformed topographies.

These social processes are fundamentally apprehended as industrial and technological, with only superficial consideration of them in historical economic and comparative cultural terms, all the while self-consciously apolitical, at least overtly. While I usually get on my critical high horse about this, I make an exception here because the industrial/technological perspective is sufficently social to ensure that the images Burtynsky captures do not go over into pure formalism or absolutely decontextualized aesthetics. The photos are remarkably artistic according to any number of criteria. Some of them are just immediately attractive. All of them are genuine compositions. And always, the gargantuan degree of what they show simply demands your attention. But however much awe they might inspire, we are looking at things that are ultimately recognizable as the work of man and their ramifications for environmental degredation are simply inescapable. These are not glossy shots for the annual corporate brochure. Burtynsky points his camera at sites of massive "waste management" that no amount of spin can make look nonproblematic, to put it mildly. But even his "marvels of construction" shots carry a subtle distopian aura (actually the shot of the colossal coal field [coal-awful field] is not too subtle) and the film too is effective along this line; never condemning but never applauding either, the camera moves along and along and along... and along the factory... and along, until finally we feel the immense expansiveness as claustrophobic. Bave new drudgery of doom. Void of anything even approaching class analysis, there is nevertheless recognition of dross and dangerous ill-paid labour in China and India as well as the polarity of residential circumstances in real-estate explosive Shanghi. Still, the orientation is intensely socio-environmental (not to be conflated with ecological which necessitates a deeper biological political economy) and the upshot is severe cognitive dissonance when looking at such beautiful ugliness.

There is occasionally a bit of voice-over commentrary from Burtynsky and also some clips of him speaking on a stage while running a slide show. We also hear now and then journalistically from locals engaged in whatever project happens to be under the lens. But in general, images do the talking. What is more, actual people, flesh-and-blood humanity is basically absent in these images. There are exceptions, to be sure, but the remarkable power of the images is their indirect deliverance of social labour. It is the imprint of that labour that we observe and this signifies that labour in spades. Not so much the act of manufacturing but the manufactured result is at hand, so the film is properly titled. We look at a photo and for a second we wonder if this is the lunar surface or a post-apocalyptic computer generated image or what. And then we recognize our planet. And then we recognize ourselves on it.

Or have I over-intellectualized yet again? Find something organic, something, anything, you know, something you might even consider eating, in a Burtynsky shot and get back to me.



[Ben takes a break, reads another's review and sends me this:]



I feel a bit ashamed by my review having read this one, for which I provide a link below. I feared that I had over-intellectualized and this guy's passionate politicized review would seem to confirm that I did so. The documentary does show more real human beings at horrible work than I acknowledged and this review is a good corrective of my art-school stupidity. Yet, as far as I could make out, Burtynsky's photographs do not depict these workers and I prioritized these photographs over the documentary about them. Yet again, the film does serve to put the photographs into a wider context and I dealt with this in quite a tight-assed academic way.

Here is the link.

And Dan:

[rants]

Lemme get this straight. I send you links to reviews of films that you haven't seen, but you refuse to read them. You send me links to reviews of films you assume I haven't seen...as a test? What the hell!

Turns out, I HAVE seen this film--on the airplane back from Cuba, if you can believe it. We have a 5 hour flight, and I watched this and Michel Gondry's (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) Science of Sleep. Manufacturing Landscapes was easily the superior film, and I like Gondry a LOT.

More later. Turns out, I'm cooking dinner.

Then Ben:

What did I say to give you the impression that I had an idea either way? I didn't assume that you had, nor did I assume that you had not seen ML? I am particularly touchy on this subject because I originally began my review with the question: "Have you seen this one?" But I edited out his down-home inquiry because I felt it was it was not in keeping with the rest of my egghead tone. I found the review difficult to write and I'm still trying to figure out why. Honestly, I scrapped two false starts before settling in to produce what you received. Then I read the anarchist's review and felt uncomfortable with what I did manage to say.

And Dan:

Relax, I'm just messing with you. Good to see it worked, though.

Keeping in mind I was watching this on a crappy little screen in a less than ideal aural environment, let me note that my first response to this film was simple awe at the amazing SCALE of it all. These manufactured landscapes, both human and geographical, are immense. But more important than the scale of the physical landscapes is the emotional scale of the material. I found the film not merely intellectually interesting, but also deeply affecting.

Right from that incredible 8 minute long opening tracking shot depicting the warehousing of human labour in the 21st century I knew that this was going to be an emotionally challenging experience. Surprising, really, given that this is ostensibly a film about the aesthetics of an art form, to discover myself so engaged by the humanity at its heart. Surprising, too, given that it is the photographer Burtynsky's desire to straddle the fence, to neither indict nor accuse, but merely to record. And surprising that so many of his photographs of these most grim landscapes are so visually exciting that there is this odd sort of cognitive and emotional disconnect--should I really be admiring the beauty of this composition?

I credit the film's director Jennifer Baichwal with bridging that gap between Burtynsky's "objectivity" and the audience's desire to be emotionally engaged by this material. She not only takes us behind the scenes, so watch how the photographer himself manufactures landscapes, she also encourages us to look deeply into the entire scene behind the manufacturing of these photographs. She contextualizes them, from the inside out and the outside in, and makes sure that we understand that this is not just about an artist's aesthetic, but about human beings living and working in horrific, deleterious conditions. Cinematographer Peter Mettler deserves credit as well, but I'd be remiss if I didn't also point out that your analysis here I find particularly helpful as I try to sort out the whys and hows of this film's ability to get to me.

Thanks for reminding me about this documentary, yet another great piece of cinematic non-fiction art.

Then Ben:

Thank you for the compliment. I needed it. In fact, I am so upset with myself for not being upset in my review that even now I wonder if you are just being nice to me because you gather that I am being hard on myself. Did you take a look at that other person's review? It's dripping all over the floor. I am wondering what happened to my heart and balls in my review of ML. Considering the lecture I gave you about defense mechanisms after Darwin's Nightmare, I retreated into my head after ML. (Starting a review by way of Tarkovsky should be a warning sign by now.)