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90"We are not pickers of garbage; we are pickers of recyclable materials," Tião, an impoverished Brazilian catadore, or trash picker, declares to a talk-show host in Lucy Walker's inspiring documentary Waste Land.
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88The only waste would be if people didn't go see it.
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88It's not a very good title, Waste Land - this isn't a bleak film, at all - but just about everything else in Lucy Walker's documentary works, and illuminates.
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83Despite his street cred, Muniz comes across as way too effete for these laborerers, many of whom have harrowing life stories to tell. But his intention to have them re-create photographic images of themselves out of garbage, while it may not pass muster as high art, has the effect of raising their spirits.
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83Though narrower in scope and lacking the first-person angle, Waste Land resembles Agnès Varda's great 2000 documentary "The Gleaners & I," particularly in its awe of tough, creative, hard-working people who live on the margins.
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Feb 21, 201180Compelling and vivid, it's another fine piece of work from an up-and-coming talent.
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80A dump is a dump, but it's immediately clear that these are working people who are making the best of their options and who have built a shared camaraderie out of that determination.
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80It's important to note that Waste Land is not a landscape film about the landfill itself. Instead, Walker, who also premiered a second documentary at Sundance, "Countdown To Zero," about the threat of nuclear proliferation, shows that Waste Land is ultimately about the pickers, Tiaõ, Zumbi, Suelem among others, who rise up through the power of their own artistic accomplishments.
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Oct 26, 201080A fascinating look at the complex intersections of art and charity, reality and perception.
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80Overall, though, the project brings enough good into this rough corner of the world that viewers can walk out with honest cause to be hopeful for its inhabitants.
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Oct 24, 201080Lucy Walker's Waste Land takes his (Vik Muniz) project one step deeper by actually getting to know Muniz's models, which brings a compelling human-interest dimension to the sort of art documentary otherwise better suited for TV.
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75It is miserable work, even after they grow accustomed to the smell. But it is useful work, and I have been thinking much about the happiness to be found by work that is honest and valuable.
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75Walker's breezy film turns Muniz into a folk hero. And who am I to argue?
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75Waste Land is a film about recycling, but it's far more intriguing than the average eco-documentary.
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75Waste Land is just what the film's website says it is: "stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit."
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75No matter who you side with here, Waste Land – the title should come with a question mark – is a fascinating adventure, populated by memorable characters.
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75While we await the definitive documentary about the glut of garbage, Waste Land reduces this global catastrophe to touchingly human scale.
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Dec 7, 201075Spend some time there, thanks to the documentary Waste Land, and you start to get the sense that, amid the trash, something really is blooming.
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70The movie might have amounted to no more than a sunny eco-parable, but it begins to bite harder when the catadores, captivated by their sudden importance, face the unhappy prospect of returning to their previous existence.
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60It probably would have helped if Walker (who credits two other codirectors) had chosen just one of those avenues for deeper study; her doc has a vertiginous way of feeling arty and ephemeral at one moment, humane and maybe too earthbound the next.