TBTS Reviews: Waste Land
You might think that a movie featuring garbage pickers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, would make for incredibly depressing fare. Add to that an internationally known artist taking photos of these pickers from which he hopes to make “art,” and the potential for discomfort goes through the roof. Part of me shudders to think of the possibility for exploitation in such a premise — a Brazillian artist living in New York who uses those at the bottom of his country’s social ladder to make art that will hang in galleries across the world, where it will be discussed, bid on, and purchased by those with enormous wealth. Surely, I thought, such a premise would fail, would have no legs to stand on, would, at the very least, only emphasize the incredible shallowness of such “art.”
But Waste Land (2010), a film by Lucy Walker and Karen Harley that documents artist Vik Muniz‘s journey through the aforementioned, handles this material with a delicacy and sensitivity that ultimately brings both viewer and subject a sense of joy and redemption.
Before getting into the film itself, I should point out that this is the type of movie that showcases the true value of Netflix. A number of weeks back, I was laid up in bed, sick with a head cold and browsing the streaming options on Netflix, looking for something mindless and “entertaining,” something to take my focus off of feeling like shite. I took a chance on WL. For the first quarter of the movie, I kept thinking, “This is depressing. I need to turn this off and find something less serious.” But I didn’t. I couldn’t. The story was too compelling, the people that Muniz worked with so proud, so tough, so much like you or me, that I couldn’t stop watching, even when issues of exploitation and voyerism seemed on the verge of overwhelming the movie’s delicate balance. An hour-and-a-half later, I was a blubbering idiot, one that was clucking a tongue at the cynical side of myself that doubted the intentions and possibilities of such a movie. Without the ease of Netflix streaming, I would likely have never taken a chance on this movie.
WL begins in NYC, as Muniz is discussing his project and impending move to Brazil with his partner. Soon after, we are on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro at Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill. To describe Jardim Garamacho — imagine a desolate scrape of land covered with mountains upon mountains of trash. Large trucks pull up, dumping load after load onto the landfill. The catadores, the pickers, swarm these new deliveries, separating any recyclable material that they can find. Birds swirl about overhead. The workers serve a dual purpose. They help the landfill by pulling out materials that can be reused, and they are then paid, by the pound, for these materials — plastics, metals, cardboards, etc.
It is a grim life, and Jardim Gramacho is one of those unpleasent reminders of the waste of modern industrial life. As the cameras follow Muniz while he takes photos and meets people, we learn that many of these catadores are just like you or me. They are often middle or lower-middle class. For whatever reason — the death of a parent, a lost job, an unexpected pregnancy — they have fallen on hard times. For many, especially the women that Vik meets, the options for getting by are often faux choices between selling drugs, prostitution, and working at the dump.
Early in the movie, you see a transformation in Vik, as he moves from detached artist to someone who is drawn into the lives of the people he’s photographing. As he gets to know them better, the entire project changes. What were supposed to be photos of trash pickers at the dump soon become something else, something grander, something the creation of which will transform the lives of all involved. Soon Muniz begins posing the people at he meets at the dump, recreating famous paintings. One woman with two small children he poses as the Virgin Mother. One man he poses as Jacque Louis-David’s 1793 painting, The Death of Marat. And so on.
Once he has these photos, he returns to his studio space, blows the photos up on the studio floor via a sort of overhead projector on steroids. Then, with the image illuminated on the studio floor, Muniz directs the pickers as they take the trash they’ve collected from the dump and “paint” the picture — green and clear plastics, used tires, etc. The effect is a sort of recycled-garbage pointillism. This is then photographed and recreated on a large scale. What sounds gimmicky in my description is all but. To truly appreciate the work and the full effect, you must simply watch the movie.
As the project winds down, and as Muniz prepares to auction one of these pieces in London, literally a world and culture away from the slums of Rio de Janeiro, he, his partner, and a collaborator discuss the ethics of what they’re doing. I won’t reveal the tenor or direction of that discussion, for it is, to my mind, the centerpiece of the movie. It is at that point that the world of art must be held accountable to itself for the barriers it has destroyed and the ways in which it has destroyed them. I will only say that if you are like me, you are reading this review with no small amount of alarm at the many number of ways this could go badly. Without giving away too much, the end result of this project will enlighten, surprise, and, if you have anything that resembles a heart, move you to the point of tears.
