Waste Land

A documentary about the international acclaimed Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, who reconstructs photos using garbage materials from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro, and with the help of the pickers who work and dwell there. An both artistically tantalizing and sociologically empathizing body of work.

This film has indeed reminded me that it is the one should have used the 4D gimmick which brazenly hyped by SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD IN 4D (2011). With a bit odor touch, it could enhance more on the turmoil what we are watching in the landfill, and it is an extraordinary case that the sense of smell could actually have played a more essential role in the film genre.

Anyway, the environment-concerned stress has never been under the spotlight here, being a documentary about art and garbage pickers, one possible pitfall is the condescending inclination, but blithely it is not the case for this film, instead it spends most of time on the individual pickers who are involved in making this project, it captures many poignant moments behind their own stories. No doubt, Vik's work does have a pivotal role of altering the pickers lives, but the film does not overwhelmingly hinge on the process of making those artworks, and which perfectly encapsulates a more sublimated obligation in additional to a general aesthetic percipient, to change the world in a better way, and Vik and his team has done it, a tenacious and awe-inspiring job.

Apart from the riveting story, there are several panning scenes of the landfill are astonishing, our life is linking with garbages everyday, but most of us act like they are thoroughly vanishing from the earth after when they are being discarded in the dustbins. After watching this film, we might be coerced to face some soiled corner of our life which we are selectively and subjectively ignoring, and starts with the most basic one: behave yourself.

The Brazilian artist Vik Muniz rooted in New York decides to make the difference and travels to Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill of the world in the outskirt of Rio de Janeiro, with the intention to help the pickers to improve their lives using his art. Vik recalls an event when he was very poor and lived in Brazil. He tried to break up a fight between two men, and he was shot when he was walking to his car. Later the shooter gave him some money that allowed Vik to travel to USA.

Vik and his friend Fábio spend two years in Jardim Gramacho and get closer to a group of pickers of recyclable materials and takes pictures of them. He uses his talent to make art using recyclable material and photographs the results. Then he travels to London and sells one of the portraits in an auction. With the money, the pickers buy a truck, equipment and build a leaning center and a library. The pickers that worked with him leans how to improve their lives and leave Jardim Gramacho.

"Waste Land" is a must see uplifting documentary that shows another side of Rio de Janeiro unusual in the cinema: the lives of people that earn their lives honestly working in the greatest landfill of the world and how they could improve their lives with social investment.

Vik Muniz gives a lesson to our corrupt politicians that embezzle money that are dedicated to people of the lower classes and shows how it is possible to improve lives using the money properly. His humanitarian work should be publicized worldwide and specially in my country. Maybe in the future, the president and politicians would be outraged not with handcuffed corrupts but with the damage that corruption causes to our people. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Lixo Extraordinário" ("Extraordinary Garbage")

"Waste Land" is a film that I picked up with interest. While the cover-art of the documentary caught my attention, the film itself proved to be much more complex, engaging, and fascinating, than I had originally imagined. A great documentary that captures: a time, place, and the ideology of a social group, working in the background of the ever present, cultural ideology.

Lower class lives are explored in a manner which not only illuminates the struggles that these individuals must go through, on a day to day basis, but also makes it clear that the cultural environment ; or landscape in Brazil, is changing.

Vic Muniz's art has never been as influential as when he decided to spend 2 years at the world's largest landfill outside of Rio. The catadores or pickers became his subjects, a ragtag group of Shakespearean types who love what they do for a living, making something out of someone else's nothing. Waste land is the title for this engrossing documentary about art as few have experienced it till now.

Making a living is what they made until Muniz changed the way they looked a recyclables. He bonded the artifacts with the humans and created memorable portraits of the pickers. A show in London, which they attended, became a catalyst for change in their lives and in the lives of spectators who had no idea Rio's garbage had become Rio's recyclables under the hands of these professional pickers.

Muniz makes sure no one condescends, no one feels sorry for his subjects, some of whom have never known anything but the landfill and others who have chosen it rather than deal drugs or prostitute themselves. Waste Land is as dignified a story about the potential of the poor class to rise out of its garbage and transform it into art and a better life. For this reason, Muniz can stand with the great humanitarians like Albert Schwitzer and Mother Theresa.

Amazing documentary in wich the high points are the stories, speaches and images of the catadores and their realities. The trajectory of Vik is just a background for the other characters. While the catadores are brilliant and impactfull, Vik is the low point of the film with some problematic lines and unfortunate placements. Good will sometimes is not enough and awareness is a lot needed when working with a very critical situation like the portrayed. But the role of the workers make the positive balance of the film. We can learn a lot with them.