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Manufactured Landscapes
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 16 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 4 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Documentary | Foreign
Written by:
Directed by: Jennifer Baichwal
Release Date:
Theatrical: June 20, 2007
DVD: November 20, 2007
Running Time: 90 minutes, Color
Origin: Canada
Language(s): English / Chinese (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Edward Burtynsky
Manufactured Landscapes begins as a portrait of acclaimed Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, who specializes in large-scale images of vast industrial landscapes. It quickly develops into a meditation on the human and environmental costs of the permanent and profound changes our planet is experiencing. Focusing on Burtynsky's images of China as it undergoes an unprecedented transformation into a 21st century powerhouse, the film’s surface is beautiful, its implications frightening. Largely shot by Peter Mettler, it captures a brave new world that manages to be both luscious and unutterably repellent, often simultaneously. (Film Forum)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site Film Forum Profile
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
TV Guide Ken Fox
Burtynsky's keen sense of color, pattern and composition are obvious from his work, but equally acute are his thoughts on how he as an artist as well as an inhabitant of the planet fits into the larger scheme of things.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Jennifer Baichwal's gorgeous documentary Manufactured Landscapes amplifies the powerful work of Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian artist who specializes in large-scale photographs of terrain transformed by civilization into rivers and tides of industrial ugliness.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Manufactured Landscapes may tell you more about how the 21st century world actually works than you really want to know, but it's a heartbreaking, beautiful, awful and awesome film.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Kenneth Baker
Leaves its audience with many troubling questions. Among them: Should a film console us with its own brilliance when it aims to discomfit us with its content?
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Manufactured Landscapes makes an inelegant point elegantly. The point: Humanity is altering the landscape drastically and by implication irrevocably.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Jim Ridley
Nothing illustrates the monstrosity of globalized commerce more vividly than the lateral tracking shot that opens Jennifer Baichwal's mesmerizing documentary Manufactured Landscapes.
Read Full Review >Variety Peter Debruge
This landmark glimpse into China's modern-day industrial revolution becomes something more -- a profound, open-ended meditation on man's physical impact on his environment.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
Burtynsky doesn't preach. He's content to let viewers make up their own minds from his eye-opening and eye-pleasing images.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
Slow in places, but the feeling of foreboding you’ll take away from it is undeniable.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter John DeFore
The result is a highly unusual viewing experience that stimulates the senses and the conscience simultaneously.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
The same virtue doesn't apply to his commentary, which is too general to rise above the pedestrian; the movie works best traveling from the eye straight to the conscience.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
Baichwal is comfortable with those moral and aesthetic ambiguities as well, and, as a result, she’s created a visual poem of devastation that makes one question one’s entire relationship to the world.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray
What's left off the table is a meaningful examination of environmental artists' responsibility to the environment they depict, and the question of whether all truly great art leaves behind a little toxic waste of its own.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Feels constrained and rather dutiful, no matter how passionate these people are about what they're observing.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
photon gave it a3:
This movie has some arresting images and interesting moments when people associated with gargantuan dams and factories are interviewed. But it takes a strangely fawning attitude toward the photographer Edward Burtynsky. We see Burtynsky looking remarkably Al Gore-like, pacing on a stage somewhere, intoning his thoughts on whatever; we see Burtynsky visitng factories and salvage operations and taking pictures. I recognize that Burtynsky has taken some good photographs of unorthodox subjects, finding an eerie beauty in industrial wastelands. But the photographer's grandstanding is unbecoming and as a subject he is uninteresting -- or perhaps the film, taking it for granted that viewers already view Burtynsky as a hero, feels that establishing the man's credentials rather than simply burnishing them is a waste of time. I have nothing at all against Burtynsky, but he isn't Richard Avedon or even Al Gore.... In the end the viewer is confused... is this a movie about a photographer or is it about the human and environmental downside of a globalized consumer culture? If it's the former I give this movie a score of 2; if it's the latter I score it 5.
Mikey j gave it a9:
I saw a presentation of this doc put on by the Art Gallery of Hamilton [,Ontario]. The director was present and we got some interesting insight into how she tried to approach the topic: the rapid industrialization of china, without being biased. Some people did comment that the images/cinematography on it own conveyed that middle ground but that the score (using mostly industrial-like sounds) does lead the viewer somewhat. I felt it was mostly effective in being unbiased and found it both beautiful and horrible to watch at the same time. It's shocking to see what happens to our recycling, the cities being torn down to facilitate a giant damn and in general the greater harm for profit & progress. I do think a compilation of images from all nations, however improbable, would have been more effective. So one can not sit smug at home and think themselves separate. Although it's hard not to come to the conclusion that China is moving much too fast for its own good, playing catch up to our mistakes, but with the knowledge to know better.
