Stunning Landscapes Can’t Manufacture Emotion

There isn’t too much to say about Jennifer Baichwal’s documentary Manufactured Landscapes other than guaranteed it will take your breath away during its very first moments. The opening tracking shot of a seemingly never-ending Chinese factory is one of the most awe-inspiring and mind-blowing sequences of film I’ve ever seen, the sheer size of the place so fantastical I was sure the whole thing had to be some sort of visual trick.

Photo "Manufacturing #18” Cankun Factory, Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, China by Edward Burtynsky in Zeitgeist Films' Manufactured Landscapes

It wasn’t, and neither is the rest of what noted photographer Edward Burtynsky documented during a trip to the country to view the effects of an industrial revolution as it pertains to China’s natural environment. As he travels through the countryside taking pictures of skyscrapers, dams, recycling yards, mines and a multitude of other manmade facilities, the film takes on a quietly disturbing meditative aura that’s as chilling as a classic John Carpenter horror movie. Nothing can prepare you for one visual marvel after another, and as a companion piece to An Inconvenient Truth a person would be hard-pressed to find something any more remarkable than this.

Yet, unlike that Oscar-winning documentary this one doesn’t always connect. Baichwal keeps viewers at arms length, assaulting their sense and perplexing their minds but never actually touches them on a deep emotional level. While much of this is obviously breathtaking, and the art form Burtynsky has created by photographing the beauteous nature of mankind’s devastating and disastrous waste is certainly miraculous, by the time this film ended I never really felt I’d learned anything so profound I’d carry that knowledge with me into the future.

Pity, because there is imagery in this no Hollywood blockbuster cold ever remotely deliver. Sights of some of these epicenters of industrial production go far beyond our wildest imaginations as well as exceed anything inside our worst nightmares. There is beauty here amidst all of the chaos, the photographer discovering and documenting it in ways that unsettled me right to my very core.

I just wish there were more to Manufactured Landscapes than this series of astonishing photographs. I wanted to know more about the people and the places he was snapping pictures of, wanted to hear the stories shaping their actions to the point were devastation and destruction didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

With our planet slowly moving towards global disaster (the science is becoming more irrefutable each and every day), the potential for a massive wakeup call lies in each and every one of the images Burtynsky carefully crafts. Unfortunately this film, for all its mesmerizing merits, isn’t that alarm, the clock still ticking to doomsday while we all continue to sit by and twiddle our thumbs in misbegotten stupor.

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  Manufactured Landscapes Theatrical Trailer