This film follows Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky to China where he documented the grim scale of Chinese industry and it's impact on the... landscape, obviously! Burtynsky's fascinating photos of industrial activity and waste have been exhibited widely, I saw the local exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario two years ago and came home with both the exhibition book of the same name and one of his framed 'quarry' prints. Now I've seen Jennifer Baichwal's film on the same topic. I think they've covered the media bases. Perhaps a role-playing game for PS3? So, thumbs up or down? Well, a thumb in each direction I think. The film gave visual context to Burtynsky's photos, which was helpful because sometimes you just can't believe that his images come from the real world. It also expanded them by capturing more of the human presence, which is often incidental in his photos. The film opened with a five minute tracking shot (shades of Robert Altman) along rows of bustling manual assembly lines. The scene showed both the monumental scale of China's industries and the massive and repetitive human activity that makes it possible. Watching a worker assemble a small electrical component at lightning speed and then later watching peasants tapping the metal off of computer chips for recycling reminded me that industry grinds down people as well as landscapes.

There were some clever juxtapositions that highlighted the economic divide in China. The remark "this is an open kitchen", for example, started while we watched a peasant's medieval outdoor stove in use but concluded while we watched the speaker, a Shanghai Realtor, show off her open-concept luxury kitchen.

The down side? Well, the film kind of dragged on (how many slow tracking shots can we sit through in a night?) and the sound track was excessively "industrial" and often grating.

Still, Manufactured Landscapes is a mind-expanding film that illuminates and expands on Edward Burtynsky vision and trusts the viewer to interpret it.

The documentary opens with a pan inside a Chinese factory that seems to go on for hours and hours. The enormity of the factory is unbelievable. It is packed with young Chinese people all in bright yellow uniforms.

Later you see swarms of these yellow-uniformed young people forced to line up in rows like school children, where they are chastised for insufficient production. It is like an enormous prison or an ant hill. You wonder, what happens to these people when they hit 25. The movie does not answer.

There are many other scenes of Chinese industry, from container docks, shipyards, mines, and a coal mine far as the eye can see past mists on the horizon.

There is almost no narration. What little there is is often in Chinese with subtitles. And the cameraman tries to find an artistic beauty in the piles of industrial waste.

Another scene that stuck in my mind was the manual processing of North America's e-waste. Every computer is smashed into components, every little pin on every chip pulled off one by one and all the metals sorted, all by hand in filthy conditions, surrounded in lead, cadmium, mercury and other dangerous heavy metals that have so contaminated the ground water it is poisonous.

The movie offers no political or environmental commentary but to me China is clearly on the wrong track. They are building a new coal-fired plant each week. They are trying to convert from 90% rural to 70% urban with frantic building of high rises. It is as if they have plugged their ears to the coming realities -- peak oil and global climate change.

Instead they need to move food production and consumption closer together. They need buildings that don't require energy -- highly insulated, no more than 7 stories high so people can climb stairs rather than rely on elevators.

The movie also showed an old oil tanker being taken apart by hand in Bangladesh. Children and teens swim in the crude oil sludge to collect the dregs. Nobody lives past 30 in this occupation.

The movie spells out no explicit message, but the implicit one is that our life style depends on an almost prison-like culture in the third world and scarring of the earth on a stupendous scale.

Much of the sound track reminds me of some rhythmic squeaky mechanical device that needs oil. It drives you almost insane. I imagine many people will walk out of this movie because of it. I think the director is trying to condition you to find the images repulsive. She overdoes it.

The experience is much like being a child. You see all manner of strange machines and activities, almost nothing explained. It overwhelms with awe and dread.

I think this movie would be best viewed on DVD, where you can turn down the sound, and the images will not be so overwhelmingly depressing.

This is the most recent addition to a new wave of educational documentaries like "The Corporation" and "Fahrenheit 9/11." Its commentary is clear and unwavering as is the breathtaking cinematic style of this well crafted feature. The film manages to impose a powerful sense of how unsteady our world is as we rush toward an environmentally unsustainable future at lightning speed - while showing us the terrifying beauty in our pursuit of progress.

Truly a remarkable accomplishment which must be seen by all who care about the world we leave to our children. Bravo!

NB - this is also the only film (of 8) at Varsity theaters (Toronto) boasting a stick-on tag which reads... "To arrange group viewings please contact...." ... a further testament to the popularity and importance of this gem.

My bet... an academy award nomination for best documentary.

OB101