Such a frustrating disappointment

Simply Perfect

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

In this uplifting documentary film a contemporary American artist Vik Muniz goes on a life-changing journey back to his homeland, Brazil. Together with his film crew he travels to Rio de Janeiro to realize another massive art project of his. However, to our surprise, instead of showing us the city that we all know, with its beautiful sandy shores, outstanding scenery and the breathtaking view on the statue of Jesus, he takes us to Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill located just on the outskirts of Rio. Vik's primary goal during this trip is to try to give back to the society he grew up in, to the people who come from the same background he once did. Those people are "catadores" or "the pickers". They spend every day working on this huge dump picking through the mountains of garbage in order to sort out the recyclable materials, without any masks or special equipment available. Those people come from the lowest poor class, choosing this job as a preferred option to begging or prostitution.Vik comes to Jardim Gramacho and starts taking pictures of the pickers, men and women. Under his supervision and guidance those pictures are remade by the pickers themselves from the collected waste materials found on the landfill. Together they create massive video installations which get later on sold all over the world at the best auction houses. All the money from the art pieces goes to the pickers to help them realize their dreams.During the course of the film you notice how taking part in creation of pieces of art, which at first might have seemed a waste of time to them, transforms the pickers completely. Gradually, they start believing not only in the power of art, but most importantly in themselves. You get constantly amazed by the inner-beauty, cheerfulness and dignity of those people who have been put in such difficult life circumstances, which could easily break anyone.The movie thus is a triumph of the human spirit and the unity of people, bringing up and beautifully mixing together such serious topics as poverty, environmental problems, education and art. You start to believe that the problem of poverty is actually solvable, mostly with the means of raising awareness, funds and promoting education among those in need. As after all, after being exposed to art the pickers never went back to the landfill, they believed they deserved more and went on to realize their dreams.

Is a good cause an excuse to produce bad art? Not in my book. And there is even less reason to make a film about it. It's an entertaining watch, I'll give them that. Beautiful shots of a Brazilian dump teeming with pickers and scavenging birds are best viewed from the comforts of you local independent cinema. The music swells to a heartwarming crescendo when the goodhearted artist takes that poor Brazilian waste picker to London on his first journey into the first world. And the artist, being a true philanthropist, doesn't stop at showing handpicked members of the Brasilan underclass, what his flashy world is like, no he makes sure from the start that the final profits of his pictures will go straight to those poor bastards. While the lucky sod breaks down and weeps as the picture is auctioned for 28000 pounds, Vik Muniz even takes the time to give him a short introduction into modern art.What makes this so unbearable to watch is the artist's complete lack of irony and, well shall I say humbleness, and the filmmaker can't be too keen on that either. Fairly early in the proceedings Vik and his wife sit in front of the computer screen that depicts Brasilians largest landfill and the artist announces proudly that this is where he is going to live for the next two years, while he, his wife and the audience knows pretty well that he's not going to do anything of that sort. But now we know what Lucy Walker is trying to tell us and we feel cheated. Namely that here we have a man who deeply cares about his fellow citizens, but if he really was the altruistic person that this film tries to makes us believe, he would have been more concerned about the plight of the people and less with portraying himself as this selfless do-gooder. This culminates in the scene when, towards the end - all the money came in already- the artist asks the black underdog if, at the very beginning when this crazy artist showed up on the dump, and told him about his vision of making art out of garbage, if he (the underdog) had realistically believed it would amount to anything, let alone a major show at the National Museum in Rio, the underdog is humbled into sheer awe, when in fact he should have answered: Well, as you had a full camera team with you, to document every step you did, I had an inkling that the whole thing would have an happy ending:' And maybe he even said something like that but it sure as hell got cut out for the final edit, cause although the director wants us to believe otherwise, the whole thing seems staged.

It's hard to not be moved by this film. Although the film takes about an hour to get going, once the movie gets its footing you will be mesmerized by how transformative creativity can be for the soul. You want a happy ending for everyone involved, you want everyone to leave their metallic shacks to live in houses with plumbing, you want in essence a perfect world...no warts and all.However, only Hollywood scripts give birth to such wild fantasy and this film is real and by its own measure, the happiness we see, while real, may only be fleeting.Waste Land is an excellent film.

Humans today are defined by the trash we produce. No other population that has ever lived here has produced the sheer volume of trash that we have done, in our disposable societies. What are we throwing away? What happens to it? I think we all sort of know. We just don't like to admit it.This is a documentary about Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, successful in the USA, returning to Brazil, north of the city of Rio de Janeiro. In particular, he travels to the world's largest landfill of the day, Jardim Gramacho, where numerous people spent years of their lives digging through the trash for valuable recyclable materials, and a meal. Yes, it's like that. (Fortunately this film isn't about electronic waste...) But these are not people beaten-down by their position. They pride themselves on the value of their work. As one man says, they recycle everything we miss, because "99 is not 100". We are in a trash crisis and landfills must grow as slowly as possible. Some of the women say they regard the work as honest, in comparison with prostitution. I was surprised they used the word "honest" as opposed to "safe" or "clean".We're not fooled that these people are pleased about things. But they have self-respect and a sense of humour.Vik's art apparently involves photographs of objects usually not considered artistic, but arranged in artistic ways. He continues this form at Jardim Gramacho, directing the creation of portraits of the surprisingly educated workers he meets living there. (Books arrive, like everything else, in the trash, affording the pickers opportunities to self-educate.) The very large portraits are created on a floor using the materials Vik's subjects work with, mostly various forms of recyclable plastic. These are then photographed and shrunk down to something around 2' x 3'.The film could get a bit wobbly when Vik's team realizes that the expectations of his subjects may be higher than he can deliver. They want their lives improved. But it works out. Vik takes his subjects to see their plastic-portrait-photos exhibited and sold for eye-popping amounts of money. It's refreshing to see that even as Vik understands how to manipulate and respect the art world, he also understands how ludicrous it is. I'm not sure what percentage went to the subjects, but they were able to use the money to better their lives in various ways, and to better the whole community of trash pickers (who prefer "recyclable material pickers" because they don't keep the trash). Copies of the photos are then returned to the original subjects, for display in their own homes.You think I just spoiled it right? (But I did warn you). Still, it really has to be seen to be believed and understood. These are wonderful people, in unpleasant circumstances that are more common, and easier to fall into, than we'd like to admit.