The Salt of the Earth (2014)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Memorable, crazy movie

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

For anyone that has ever dreamed of travelling the world as a photographer, The Salt of the Earth is the pinnacle exhibition of that sentiment. Übermensch Wim Wenders directs and narrates an exposé of Sebastião Salgado's 40-year career as photojournalist, artist and ethnographer. Salgado's black and white photographs, taken in South America, Africa and Central Europe provide us an opportunity to accompany him on a journey, as he describes it, "to witness the human condition." The photographs are a beautiful, stark reminder of man as a beastly animal, cruel in his tyranny over the land and others. The photos from the Serra Palada gold mine in Brazil, my personal favourites, are astonishing in their magnitude, exposing man as both ant and God. Wenders' film is a stunning revelation of Salgado's works and requires your full intellectual and emotional intelligence to appreciate what you can.

The Salt of Earth is a movie about pictures of our world, not just photos, but a critical vision of our society, a son to father movie, about how a former economist saw the world thought his camera. This documentary could be just a about a great photographer, but it goes beyond, and show us about the human side of ourself, a side sometimes we forget. To take a perfect pictures may took years, may took risk of life, may took a feeling, but always will need a human instinct to see, what is almost impossible to see for everyone else. The main argument in this movie isn't about how take pictures, but what they means for us, and what it shows, a war, a strong little boy man, a beautiful woman going to die, human greed for gold, or just how the world don't need us to be beautiful. The director show a movie about human nature, in best picture, but not in the best of human, sometimes, the best picture show the worst of human nature. This is the best lesson from this movie, human nature is complex, and sometimes chaotic.

This outstanding documentary hit me like a ton of bricks, I don't remember the last time I was that much intrigued and couldn't take my eyes off the screen. The works of photographer Sebastião Salgado is shown in detail while his life is narrated on the background. One of the best things of this movie is that it's not a sole biography, it is actually the story of his soul-shattering pictures taken during the Ethiopian famine, genocide in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, end of Gulf War I while Kuwaiti oilfields were in flames, and many other horrific moments humankind have experienced. Concurrently, Salgado tells how he felt during those moments and how difficult it was to witness such dreadful moments after his interaction with the people forced to endure their misfortune. From this perspective, as the story goes on the viewer develops a great deal of admiration for Mr. Salgado and his work. He is definitely a life changer artist, and to picture the reality he's made lots of sacrifices some of which are even inconceivable to most of us. This work of art does not only depict the pain human kind have experienced in a mechanical order, but with the tense emotional reality we human beings possess. You don't just see the sufferings, feel pity for them and move on, you feel it in your heart and think something is really wrong with our system. And the hardest reality to accept is that we all are part of the system. I think it is a formidable sin to live in prosperity while others struggle and stay alive in poverty, but the funny thing is there is no divine retribution for anything in this world; therefore it is up to average people to do something. Even watching this movie will help increase the awareness of the facts around the world.The Salt of the Earth is a remarkable documentary, well-directed by acclaimed German director Wim Wenders, and tells the life story of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado in chapters of his expeditions during last 40 years of his life. I highly recommend it to anyone who wishes not to see the world through rose-coloured glasses.

A magnificent piece of work. A long trip through the work of Sebastião Salgado. Essentially it covers his trip from Brazil all round the world and back again to Brazil. It gives a glimpse of some of the photographs from his books, some biography from his son and the vistas where we took these photos. There's some of the story about "Migrations" including ex- Yugoslavia. There's some footage about "Workers". Then there's the Rwanda massacre. This leads him to say that humanity is terrible. Something I don't agree with, in spite of humanities's worse atrocities. But then he comes back with "Genesis" an uplifting story about nature and humanity. In a sense he seems to get over the atrocities and see positive aspects to the human race. This ends with the re-forestation of his home farm. all in all a fascinating trip ending with an optimistic ending.