Manufactured Landscapes (2006)

I love this movie so much

A Masterpiece!

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Thought provoking and unsettling documentary, which profiles Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky as he travels to China to explore the profound environmental impact of that country's industrial revolution.I think I would classify this as "horror" actually, it's very disturbing and makes me wonder why I bother with my little bit of recycling with the state of things in China.Not much of a "profile" on the artist, he's just there taking pictures and doing the odd voice over. Came across a bit long winded and dry in places too, and oddly filmed in black and white in sections which I found distracting.The ship breakers scene in Bangladesh stands out as does the brick by brick (by hand) levelling of entire cities, in order to make way for shipping lanes and the Three Gorges Dam. That was pretty horrifying due to the scale involved. I have seen other (better) documentaries on these subjects and as I said this really doesn't profile the artist at all. 06.13

Mesmerizing, breathtaking and horrifying, this hauntingly beautiful film is the "Apocalypse Now" without fiction. Slow in pace, quiet in mood, it gives good glimpses of the poisoned patches of Earth that may well be signs of an inevitable doom.There is no doubt in my mind -- the nature is plagued and we are the disease. Greed, the very essence of humanity that drives evolution and progress, has turned us into something like cancer, on its way to consume the host and die with it...Manufactured Landscapes is quite an unforgettable viewing experience - at least I'll never regard my toaster and iron the same way again.

I had heard this film was a study of a landscape photographer's art by presenting the beauty in man's deconstructing the natural landscape. It certainly showed the laborious activities to find locations, setup shots, and capture stark images whose final destinations were art studios worldwide. Put together in moving pictures it is truly a horror show.This film oozes by you supplanting the shock of ghastly images with gentle waves of a wonderful industrial soundtrack that guides you like on slow moving river. Each sequence stands on its own, but in combination you get deeper and deeper into the feeling of overwhelming inevitability. There are few words, this allowing the grandeur in what is shown to preach in its own way. An awful, massive factory filled with human automata who live in hopelessly lifeless dormitories. Individuals dying early while rummaging for recyclable scraps in mountains of our E-waste. The birthing of gigantic ships and their destruction by hand in giant graveyards. The construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the largest industrial project in human history and likely for all time. The time lapse as a city dies and is simultaneously reborn into a replica of modernity that purposefully destroys all relics of the culture that was.The most terrifying image for me was a dam engineer explaining that the most important function of the dam was flood control. The shot shifts to the orchard behind the spokesperson where you witness the level of the last flood by the toxic water having eaten the bark from the trees, demonstrating that nothing but the most hideous vermin could be living in the waters.The obvious not being stated is far more powerful than your normal preachy Save the Earth documentaries. The artist Edward Burtynsky explains the method wonderfully. 'By not saying what you should see … many people today sit in an uncomfortable spot where you don't necessarily want to give up what we have but we realize what we're doing is creating problems that run deep. It is not a simple right or wrong. It needs a whole new way of thinking'. The subtlety of this descends into an either/or proposition, but the film images scream that the decision has very much been made in favor of the dark side.Though never stated directly in any way, as the waves of what you witness wash away from your awareness and you contemplate, there is only one conclusion possible … we are doomed. The progress of mankind that is inexorable from our natures leaves behind carnage that this artist finds terrifying beauty in. What he is actually capturing are the tracks of we the lemmings rushing unconsciously toward our own demise. Unlike most films with environmental themes, this one ends with no call to arms. It argues basically what's the point, but makes certain you place the blame properly on all of us equally.

I have been an admirer of Edward Burtynsky's work for years, and it was such a pleasure to be able to see the man at work, thanks to Jennifer Baichwal's documentary. The severe beauty of the ship-breaking yard in Bangladesh, the stone quarry in Vermont, the enormous assembly plant in China, the beleaguered old neighbourhoods in Shanghai that are just waiting to be torn down: these landscapes are captured so well by the photographer and the filmmaker.At times I thought of old TV documentaries on abandoned coal mines and plastic-mold factories; the sort of stuff I grew up watching. Burtynsky's work has the great value of pointing out how the industrial activity has only shifted to Asia, it has not stopped. The strangest scene for me was the computer scrap-yard somewhere in China--the waste had a threatening air about it, while the workers were very jovial.