"Manufactured Landscapes" is an interesting documentary about Edward Burtynsky who specializes in taking photographs of industry and manufacturing in an attempt to warn against the environmental depletion of the planet. The film itself is mainly focused on China which is in the process of transforming itself from an agrarian society to an industrial power. There are consequences to this course of action, especially in the displacement of the population and increased pollution.

This felt a little like a companion piece to Wall-E briefly in the beginning; images of overwhelming waste, even nice compacted cubes of it a la that film. Then later it sort of connected for me with a book I recently read called "Lost on Planet China" by J. Maarten Troost, although that book wants to be a comedic monologue more than a travelogue/social commentary.This film is humorless. Which is fine, but the notion that it is not a polemic, or even the photos alone are not political, is quite unfair, even if I do tend to lean the same way as the filmmaker's viewpoint. I understand that some people feel China is one huge Pittsburgh/Sheffield and that "we" are defiling our Mother Earth. I'm not entirely sure I buy that though.I'm always a little suspicious of "the old ways are best" thinking. I'm generally pretty happy with increasing life-spans, and I know that change comes with costs. Ideally you minimize the damage, but I wondered how these filmmakers would depict the birth of a child. Notice the woman's body beforehand, but now in manufacturing a child, look at the gross distension of the innards, and once the child is finally delivered, observe the impact on the once-vibrant young couple as they struggle through endless hours of sleeplessness and toil with the mound of waste produced by just one child.For some reason, I also expected the photography to be more artistic, a la "The War Photographer" (a film that I would recommend if you liked this one, or even if you just finished this one). I liked one of the Chinese people, examining a picture of him and remarking how the scale of the shot was so large that there was no detail. Nothing intimate.Anyways, an interesting albeit strongly biased view of China...just the number of women workers in different positions was fascinating. Including the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" with the either attractive or repelling (or both for me?) Diana Lu, extravagant real estate agent, was kind of weird to me. Especially when contrasted with omitting the stonecutter, who was in the deleted scenes, well all choices are loaded.I'll look for the photography book at the library, some of those shots with a green oval inside a strip mining pit show briefly in the film I wanted to understand more. I assume enhanced via filters/processing. Also the Bangladesh ship graveyard...while maybe meant to be a cautionary scaring about our wasteful ways was nonetheless compelling, like having a ringside seat to the La Brea Tar Pits back when the dinosaurs were laying down for extinction.The legacy of China's rapid growth will be understood long after I am gone, and I'm not so sure that Eve and Wall-E will be weeping over the Great Wall crumbled down to build our great-great-great automaton grandchildren.

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.

holy Sh*t this was god awful. i sat in the theater for for an hour and ten minutes and i thought i was going to gouge out my eyes much in the manor Oedipus Rex. dear god. this movie deserves no more credit than anything done by a middle school film buff. please save your money, this movie can offer you nothing. unless you enjoy sideshows and sleeping in movie theaters. you know, h3ll, bring your girlfriend and make things interesting. you will be the only ones there anyway. F@ck this slide show. Ye Be Warned.I recommend not watching this.hello.how are you?I'm pretty good.enjoying this day?I am.this comment was one-hundred times more fun than pretending to watch this daym movie. this is sad.