Let me start this review by saying that Wim Wenders' newest film is one you should really try to see at a theater. Its possibly biggest strength is the visual impact and it is probably just not the same on television or a small computer screen. "The Salt of the Earth" won the Special Jury Price "Un Certain regard" at the prestigious Cannes film festival this year and mostly deals with a photographer who has traveled the world in the last decades.
Wenders has done lots of documentary work recently, "Pina" and "Cathedrals of Culture" to mention only two. Next up for him is a "real" movie again starring James Franco and Rachel McAdams. When filming Sebastião Salgado here, he gets help by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the son of the film's protagonist. The documentary starts with Wenders telling us the linguistic origin of the word "photographer". I could have done without this, but I liked how Wenders speaks about the two pictures that made him familiar with his work. This would have worked perfectly as the initial introduction as well.
The film is basically divided into two parts. Wenders narrates about Salgado's life which does not have directly to do with his work and Salgado himself narrates about his photographs. I definitely preferred the latter. First of all, you can read about Salgado's biography, so I would also have been okay with the film really being just about the photographs. Also Wenders always have a tendency to use so much poetry and so many metaphors that it could become slightly pretentious, especially with Salgado seemingly being a man with very rational, factual language. Anyway, the biographical part was more at the beginning, so it was okay. It would have been too much for my taste if it had gone on for the whole movie. It's not really that interesting to me when Salgado went to London and back for what professional reasons.
The photographs were the absolute highlight of the film. Seeing them and listen Salgado explain is the heart and soul of the film. Also, I liked one scene in particular when we see Wenders filming Salgado and Salgado "shooting back". It is also interesting how, at one point, Salgado had seen so much human misery that he mostly moved on to animals and plants. And even if I don't like the title that much (reference, humans are the salt of the Earth), I can recommend giving this a look. I did not love it as much as I hoped I would, but I still liked it and it is certainly a very impressive watch, especially if you are interested in environment or global politics. The main music theme is nice too.
Wenders has done lots of documentary work recently, "Pina" and "Cathedrals of Culture" to mention only two. Next up for him is a "real" movie again starring James Franco and Rachel McAdams. When filming Sebastião Salgado here, he gets help by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the son of the film's protagonist. The documentary starts with Wenders telling us the linguistic origin of the word "photographer". I could have done without this, but I liked how Wenders speaks about the two pictures that made him familiar with his work. This would have worked perfectly as the initial introduction as well.
The film is basically divided into two parts. Wenders narrates about Salgado's life which does not have directly to do with his work and Salgado himself narrates about his photographs. I definitely preferred the latter. First of all, you can read about Salgado's biography, so I would also have been okay with the film really being just about the photographs. Also Wenders always have a tendency to use so much poetry and so many metaphors that it could become slightly pretentious, especially with Salgado seemingly being a man with very rational, factual language. Anyway, the biographical part was more at the beginning, so it was okay. It would have been too much for my taste if it had gone on for the whole movie. It's not really that interesting to me when Salgado went to London and back for what professional reasons.
The photographs were the absolute highlight of the film. Seeing them and listen Salgado explain is the heart and soul of the film. Also, I liked one scene in particular when we see Wenders filming Salgado and Salgado "shooting back". It is also interesting how, at one point, Salgado had seen so much human misery that he mostly moved on to animals and plants. And even if I don't like the title that much (reference, humans are the salt of the Earth), I can recommend giving this a look. I did not love it as much as I hoped I would, but I still liked it and it is certainly a very impressive watch, especially if you are interested in environment or global politics. The main music theme is nice too.