Review of Waste Land (2010) by V H — 21 Feb 2011

My first impression of the documentary "Waste Land" was not positive. After a scene showing Brazilian artist Vic Muniz appearing on a talk show to discuss his most recent project, we flash back to its inception, when he's still home in New York trying to explain the idea to his wife. So wait a minute...how is it that there are already cameras there recording this moment? Did Muniz agree to be the subject of a film about his upcoming project before even explaining the concept with his wife? Or were cameras following him around for years, just waiting for him to come up with a new idea? Or, was the scene with his wife actually staged after the fact? Hmm...

Fortunately, I was able to set aside my doubts about the veracity of the opening once the film moved on to the project itself. Muniz, who'd previously done a show in which he created portraits of the children of sugar cane pickers made out of sugar, this time wants to create portraits of garbage pickers made out of garbage. He travels to a dump outside of Rio called Jardim Gramacho, which we're told is the world's largest landfill. The dump is teeming with yellow-vested "catadores" (scavengers), who make their living sifting through enormous mounds of garbage to pick out recyclables for scrap companies.

It's unclear just how many catadores Muniz interviewed who didn't make the cut, but the seven he ends up choosing are all visually and personally compelling. Most have worked there since childhood. There's the young leader who reads Machiavelli and forms an organization to improve the pickers' conditions, a guy who salvages any books he finds to make a little library, a pretty 18-year-old who already has two babies, an old woman who serves as the dump's cook, a woman who recently left her husband, another who lost a son, and an old guy who explains that it's still important to recycle even one can, regardless of whether 99 others end up in a landfill, because "99 is not 100".

Initially, Muniz believes that his chosen few are actually happy to make their living as catadores, but this proves to be something of an illusion. It's more accurate to say that they make the best of it and they're not ashamed of it; it's an honest living, unlike prostitution, as several of the women point out.

This realization creates an unanticipated predicament for Muniz. He's temporarily pulled most of his subjects out of the dump to help him with his project - which involves strategically placing recyclables onto enormous laid-out portraits of themselves to provide shading, after which Muniz photographs the finished product - and now they don't want to go back. And who can blame them? Working in a studio with their rich artist friend sure beats picking through piles of smelly garbage in search of plastic water bottles.

Muniz is left to wonder if it was better to expose these people to a better world, if only briefly, knowing that they'd eventually have to return, or to have just left them in their own world all along. Of course by the time he thinks to ponder this question, it's already too late.

"Waste Land" starts off very slowly with facts and figures and aerial views of the dump but really picks up once we're introduced to the humans who populate it. I remained a bit skeptical as to just how much of this story was actually planned, as opposed to Muniz being genuinely surprised to find himself in a position in which he could play "god" - or at least "Oprah" - with people's lives. But the real power of this film is with the catadores themselves, who remain proud and strong and even happy, despite life having dealt them all really crappy hands. (Sometimes literally.).