A more accurate and honest description of the Manufactured Landscapes subject matter might be “Jennifer Baichwal in China with special guest Edward Burtynsky.”
Burtynsky’s large scale photography, which documents man’s alteration of natural landscapes and creation of completely artificial ones, is simply breathtaking. As the film lingers on each photograph, deeper questions and mysteries of human nature, and our destiny on this planet, viewers are left feeling not on either side of a political issue but equally caught up in something inevitable.
Unfortunately for the viewer, however, Burtynsky’s photography is merely a supporting player, a jumping-off point for director Baichwal’s own meditations on the theme, as explored during one of Burtynsky’s trips to wildly industrializing China.
Baichwal and cinematographer/creative consultant Peter Mettler’s moving images tend to focus more on the individuals involved and minutiae of these grand transformations. The close-ups complement Butynsky’s distant snapshots, and carry with them a tone more charged with subjective horror and personal monotony than Burtynsky’s eye of god.
This could be a fruitful exercise, but Baichwal’s fussy inventory dominates the screen time (as in the much ballyhooed opening tracking shot), and withers when juxtaposed with Burtynsky’s potent stills. Shouldn’t the subject of a documentary be at its center?
– Mike Hobart
Manufactured Landscapes
Director: Jennifer Baichwal
90 Minutes, Zeitgeist Films
www.zeitgeistfilms.com