Two thumbs up for the documentary "Manufactured Landscapes", about photographer Ed Burtynsky and his work traveling industrial China. The documentary, directed by Jennifer Baichwal, does exactly what a documentary should do: act as a vehicle for presenting you with exactly what you want to learn. Her skills are seamless. In the opening sequence, the camera pans what feels like miles of rows of worker stations in a factory in China, in a slow pace that reinforces the repetition of the workers, the repetition of their tasks. It felt like watching Lewis Hine's photographs come alive, in a different time and place.
Burtynsky has been working on the subject of the man-altered, industrial landscape for twenty some years. This work in China is particularly relevant as the current news headlines remind us of its galloping industrial revolution. The film shows us the infinite loop of production and destruction as some workers create tiny objects in the factories for global sale, and some workers paw through scrap metal for recyclable parts to be melted down and used again. Apparently a huge percentage of used computers end up in China to be broken down and reused, and a lot of those heavy metals have started to show up in their water supply... so many big questions are opened up about our day to day existence, as Americans, as 21st Centurians, about the things that we know or suspect and may ignore anyway.
Burtynsky remains surprisingly neutral in the position of his work. It is political, of course, but it is asking deeper questions of humankind, of what we value, and the costs and the sacrifices of our consumerist culture. The images are positively stunning, grand and beautiful and rich. He's got a tender heart too, for the (few) people he photographs- he lets them be, in their own environment, for even though the landscape is his focus, it is a wholly human project.