Oblique
Angle
by Pat Padua
Manufactured
Landscapes, a documentary about the Canadian
industrial landsca;pe photographer Edward Burtynsky, opens
with an impressive eight-minute tracking shot along the floor
of a Chinese factory, past aisle after aisle of assembly-line
activity. The movie could have ended there, with a culminating
image of Burtynsky's finished photo--that's all the director
needs to say. But director Jennifer Baichwal continues with
the picture and introduces you to Burtynsky and his working
methods and ideas. Which is where things get tricky.
In
the film, Burtynsky claims that his images of industrial creation
and decay are not intended to damn or glamorize his subject:
he only wants to show how things are. From other interviews
I'm not sure he holds to that no-spin self-assessment, but
in the context of this picture the statement is simply disingenuous.
You don't drag a large-format camera with a crew of assistants
to shoot factories in China or ship-breaking beaches in Bangladesh
without an agenda. This is provocative in ways that Burtnysky
certainly didn't intend--I'm just not sure what the director
intended.
Fur,
a film by Steven Shainberg, was tolerable for the first hour
or so, though I had to forget it was about Diane Arbus (played
here by Nicole Kidman) in order to tolerate it. The subjects
of Arbus' best-known photos are often grotesque, but like
journalist Joseph Mitchell, who briefly befriended her (now
that would have been a movie), her sensationalistic
subjects were treated with an elegant matter-of-factness and
not touched by romance. The movie, on the other hand, treats
the artist as a naif, trapped in gender conventions that are
only escapable by one part Alice in Wonderland and
two parts Beauty and the Magical Beastly Subject
(i.e. Robert Downey Jr.).
Part of me finds this an interesting treatment
of the artistic temperament;
another finds it terribly patronizing to it, as if being open
to creative thinking is simply a passive act and has nothing
to do with work and active engagement; all of me finds this
has no business in any thoughtful consideration of Diane Arbus
and her work.
Then it gets maudlin.
It's beautifully photographed, but through a
slick, Lynchian gauze that once again has nothing to do with
the way Arbus's photos actually looked. There might be a more
thoroughly misguided biopic in recent memory, but I can't
bring one to mind.
©2007 Pat Padua
CineScene
