User Reviews

The first part of this movie has modern Brazilian artist Vik Muniz (based in New York) visiting Jardim Gramacho, one of the world's largest garbage dumps, near Rio de Janeiro. We are introduced to some of the "pickers" who sort through the giant mountains of trash for recyclable materials. One of the messages of the movie for me was to see that the pickers, while living tough lives, are pretty normal people, many with families. Most of them are quite philosophical about their jobs, feeling that they are doing a useful and needed service and getting paid on the order of $20 a day. This first part of the film disabuses you of any stereotypes you may have of the people working in the dump.

About a third of the way in it looked to me like this was going to be more of the same, seeing Muniz photograph more workers and talking with them. That was interesting enough, but if that was all that was going to happen, I was on the verge of bailing out. But then I found out what Muniz was really trying to do, which was to create an art work. He projected his photos onto the floor of a large hall, enlarged to a size of about 100 feet by 100 feet. Then he had the subjects of the photos bring in materials from the dump and arrange them artistically around the photo outlines on the floor. The final product was a photo of the arrangements on the floor. Seeing how the people reacted to their artistic efforts was when I became truly taken in. From there the movie held many surprises.

Muniz pledged to contribute all monies from the art works resulting from this project ($250,000 at the time of filming) to the improvement of the lives of the pickers. The effect that the experience of working on this project had on the pickers was most interesting. It changed their lives, and the life of Muniz as well--to his surprise. I particularly liked the part where Muniz visits his childhood home in São Paulo and notes that, absent an accident in his youth that had fortuitous consequences, he could easily picture himself as having wound up among the pickers, instead of being a financially successful New York artist. There was an engaging dialog between Muniz and his wife as to whether lives had been changed for the better.

The photography often reveals an artist's eye and there is is some original music by Moby that enhances the experience.

I don't think I have ever seen a better example of the trans-formative power of art. This film, that I thought was going to be a downer, turned out to be inspiring.

Humans today are defined by the trash we produce. No other population that has ever lived here has produced the sheer volume of trash that we have done, in our disposable societies. What are we throwing away? What happens to it? I think we all sort of know. We just don't like to admit it.

This is a documentary about Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, successful in the USA, returning to Brazil, north of the city of Rio de Janeiro. In particular, he travels to the world's largest landfill of the day, Jardim Gramacho, where numerous people spent years of their lives digging through the trash for valuable recyclable materials, and a meal. Yes, it's like that. (Fortunately this film isn't about electronic waste...)

But these are not people beaten-down by their position. They pride themselves on the value of their work. As one man says, they recycle everything we miss, because "99 is not 100". We are in a trash crisis and landfills must grow as slowly as possible. Some of the women say they regard the work as honest, in comparison with prostitution. I was surprised they used the word "honest" as opposed to "safe" or "clean".

We're not fooled that these people are pleased about things. But they have self-respect and a sense of humour.

Vik's art apparently involves photographs of objects usually not considered artistic, but arranged in artistic ways. He continues this form at Jardim Gramacho, directing the creation of portraits of the surprisingly educated workers he meets living there. (Books arrive, like everything else, in the trash, affording the pickers opportunities to self-educate.) The very large portraits are created on a floor using the materials Vik's subjects work with, mostly various forms of recyclable plastic. These are then photographed and shrunk down to something around 2' x 3'.

The film could get a bit wobbly when Vik's team realizes that the expectations of his subjects may be higher than he can deliver. They want their lives improved. But it works out. Vik takes his subjects to see their plastic-portrait-photos exhibited and sold for eye-popping amounts of money. It's refreshing to see that even as Vik understands how to manipulate and respect the art world, he also understands how ludicrous it is. I'm not sure what percentage went to the subjects, but they were able to use the money to better their lives in various ways, and to better the whole community of trash pickers (who prefer "recyclable material pickers" because they don't keep the trash). Copies of the photos are then returned to the original subjects, for display in their own homes.

You think I just spoiled it right? (But I did warn you). Still, it really has to be seen to be believed and understood. These are wonderful people, in unpleasant circumstances that are more common, and easier to fall into, than we'd like to admit.

I loved this film for its beauty.

Waste Land helped build my understanding and appreciation of modern art from almost zero aside from MIT's Walter Lewin lecture on Modern Art - who is adamant that modern art is supposed to be "ugly" and change the way one looks at things. Vic Muniz, the artist in the film takes this further by explaining how to look at art: stand back to get the idea, get closer to look at the materials and detail the artist uses.

Vic uses the same technique to get to know the landscape and the subjects of his film first looking at them from aerial photos/plane and then on the ground. Astonishing how this transforms the subjects and landscape from a rubbish tip to beautiful and inspiring people and works of art. His subjects were totally in tune and connected with their environment in the landfill.

By the end of the film even Vic's wonderful, tasteful, designer home in NY looked like a slightly more orderly version of his subject's favelas.

The title of this documentary is derived from T. S. Eliot's apocalyptic poem The Waste Land, where the world has been polluted by modernity. Director Lucy Walker isn't as bleak about her project because the film has the framework of a simple feel good story. Yet under the surface is anger, hurt and true humanity. It was appreciated through the eyes of artist Vik Muniz who obtained a new perspective on the world. He's extremely wealth and popular but prior to this film he was unsatisfied with his materialist lifestyle. On the edge of Rio de Janeiro is Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest garbage dump. "Catadores" or pickers are people hired by the ACAMJG (Association of Collectors of the Metropolitan Landfill of Jardim Gramacho) to organise the garbage there into recycles so the materials can be sold. Vik initially intended to paint the catadores with rubbish since he is adept in collecting everyday things for his projects. One of his most famous works is called "Sugar Children", where he used sugar from the plantations in St. Kitts to develop images of the children working there. The purpose of this is to retain a tangible connection to his subjects as he constructs the works. It seems to remind him of what he is really illustrating, physically and metaphorically.

This same method surfaced during the Waste Land project. He discovered that beneath the rubbish were real people who suffered and sometimes didn't even know their own situations. Vik's wife commented that some of them are in denial and that taking them out of their environments would potentially disrupt their minds. It was a valid point because many of the people working on the landfill had been there since childhood. They scavenged through the enormous rubbish piles willingly but were smart enough to organise it into piles so it could be sold and recycled efficiently. They showed their colour and intelligence to Vik through some of their quotes like '99 cans is not 100' and 'it's not rubbish because it can be recycled'. His empathy is clearly articulated in the documentary. He said that he used to grow up in poverty and suggested that he could have been working in the landfill. This is what developed his connection on camera and why he chose to make them the focus of the works. He auctioned off the paintings he made of them so that he could use the money to improve their lives. One of the most humorous paintings Vik design was a recreation of Jacques-Louis David's "The Death of Marat" in an old tub.

The class elements of Waste Land are its most surprising socio-political concerns. Many of the pickers stated they were frowned upon by people, who were not only wealthy, but well-educated Brazilians too. One of the common responses was that they don't care about being dirty because it was a more honest line of work than the prostitution in the area. The pickers in the film are distinguishing because of their courageous attitude but also because their stories are moving too. One of the women commented that she hated working in the landfill. She described how when her son died his body was wrapped in a plastic bag. Another woman recalled how she saw a baby left in the rubbish, which seemed deeply affecting for her because she had children of her own. The hurt beneath these people, who were so diligent towards a thankless task, gives the film emotional pull.

It is a nice movie because it's about someone who simply wanted to use his own wealth, status and creativity to do better by others. It's very cleanly photographed and one of the most interesting shots is a wide angle of Vik sitting in his quarters, surrounded by all the junk on his wall, showing his isolation. This is just after he said that he was unfulfilled by how materialistic his life became. The only thing wrong with the film is that the occasional Portuguese subtitles are in a white font, which means that in bright areas they are sometimes impossible to read. If it were a Hollywood picture people would call Waste Land sentimental and predictable. Yet the importance of the documentary is that its subjects and their attitudes are real and that there are still genuinely kind and hardworking people in the world. I find that alone extremely refreshing.

A previous movie that I saw focusing on a Brazilian landfill is Stephen Daldry's "Trash". Now I've seen Lucy Walker's Academy Award-nominated documentary "Waste Land", focusing on the world's largest landfill and the people who sort through the garbage collecting recyclables to turn into art. All these people have hard lives and continue with this miserable work just to make ends meet.

The landfill got closed in 2012. The documentary got released during Lula's last year in office, right before Dilma Rousseff got elected in a continued rejection of the oligarchy (unfortunately, she got impeached, and Brazil's current president promotes near-fascist views). I just wonder what's become of the movie's subjects now that Jair Bolsonaro encourages police kill at random. These people on the bottom rung of society got to see their work displayed in a museum in London, but can they survive an avowed racist?

Anyway, the documentary should draw attention to the issue of how much garbage humans generate, and how we might find better ways to deal with it. We can't keep producing the mass quantities that we produce each day, especially since we end up dumping a lot of it into the oceans.

Great documentary.

In this uplifting documentary film a contemporary American artist Vik Muniz goes on a life-changing journey back to his homeland, Brazil. Together with his film crew he travels to Rio de Janeiro to realize another massive art project of his. However, to our surprise, instead of showing us the city that we all know, with its beautiful sandy shores, outstanding scenery and the breathtaking view on the statue of Jesus, he takes us to Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill located just on the outskirts of Rio.

Vik's primary goal during this trip is to try to give back to the society he grew up in, to the people who come from the same background he once did. Those people are "catadores" or "the pickers". They spend every day working on this huge dump picking through the mountains of garbage in order to sort out the recyclable materials, without any masks or special equipment available. Those people come from the lowest poor class, choosing this job as a preferred option to begging or prostitution.

Vik comes to Jardim Gramacho and starts taking pictures of the pickers, men and women. Under his supervision and guidance those pictures are remade by the pickers themselves from the collected waste materials found on the landfill. Together they create massive video installations which get later on sold all over the world at the best auction houses. All the money from the art pieces goes to the pickers to help them realize their dreams.

During the course of the film you notice how taking part in creation of pieces of art, which at first might have seemed a waste of time to them, transforms the pickers completely. Gradually, they start believing not only in the power of art, but most importantly in themselves. You get constantly amazed by the inner-beauty, cheerfulness and dignity of those people who have been put in such difficult life circumstances, which could easily break anyone.

The movie thus is a triumph of the human spirit and the unity of people, bringing up and beautifully mixing together such serious topics as poverty, environmental problems, education and art. You start to believe that the problem of poverty is actually solvable, mostly with the means of raising awareness, funds and promoting education among those in need. As after all, after being exposed to art the pickers never went back to the landfill, they believed they deserved more and went on to realize their dreams.

The documentary Wasteland is about the story of how Vik Muniz discovered the art of recycling. He goes to Brazil where he finds people who are known as pickers. Pickers go to a land fill to go through trash and find valuable things that can be recycled. The landfill is the biggest dump place for trash in the entire country. 100% of Brazil's trash ends up in this land fill but only 70 % of the trash is from Rio, where the landfill is located. Sometimes people will even find dead bodies in the landfill. In the movie there were a variety of pickers who each have their own stories about their life and why they choose to be a picker.

Pickers deserve more honor than they receive. They would rather go through the landfill than sell drugs or get involved with prostitution. There is one young woman who is a picker and has 2 kids. She decides for her life that she doesn't want to be a prostitute. There was a young man who was the most deceiving about the whole idea of being a picker while no one else believed in him he believed in himself. He was very precise and he achieved what he believed in which was a very influential.

The reason why people should watch this is because it's very inspirational and the artwork of what Vik Muniz and the team of pickers did was artistic and innovative. It made it look like it was more than just trash. People who are interested in the art industry should watch this too. Wasteland is the perfect example of a win-win situation.