Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

IslandGuru Who payed the critics

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

bshljtbaruah80 Waste Land is a true classic depicting inner humane values radiating through art forms of exuberance. Vik Muniz's extraordinary artistic zeal spiced with humanity in collaboration with those true aspirations of the characters that the former portrait gives the entire plot a genuinely vibrant touch. It ignites the recycling power of our inner self as it makes us feel the universal human appeal more deeply then ever. It allows us to peep through the vibrant colorful membrane of civilization straight into the lives of those standing at the 'fundamental sphere' of d civilization super structure, coping up with life with whatever means they are provided with....living rather in their own happy times sans any involvement in petty vices of so called "modern civilized society". But still they are human...they have been unable to acquire the taste of life in fullest terms but they still possess that zeal to improvise their life style, at least into another level. Vik Muniz just provided them that platform,standing on which they can at least level up themselves with the other lot of the society. Simply a Masterpiece!!!

captain_dimpf Is a good cause an excuse to produce bad art? Not in my book. And there is even less reason to make a film about it. It's an entertaining watch, I'll give them that. Beautiful shots of a Brazilian dump teeming with pickers and scavenging birds are best viewed from the comforts of you local independent cinema. The music swells to a heartwarming crescendo when the goodhearted artist takes that poor Brazilian waste picker to London on his first journey into the first world. And the artist, being a true philanthropist, doesn't stop at showing handpicked members of the Brasilan underclass, what his flashy world is like, no he makes sure from the start that the final profits of his pictures will go straight to those poor bastards. While the lucky sod breaks down and weeps as the picture is auctioned for 28000 pounds, Vik Muniz even takes the time to give him a short introduction into modern art.What makes this so unbearable to watch is the artist's complete lack of irony and, well shall I say humbleness, and the filmmaker can't be too keen on that either. Fairly early in the proceedings Vik and his wife sit in front of the computer screen that depicts Brasilians largest landfill and the artist announces proudly that this is where he is going to live for the next two years, while he, his wife and the audience knows pretty well that he's not going to do anything of that sort. But now we know what Lucy Walker is trying to tell us and we feel cheated. Namely that here we have a man who deeply cares about his fellow citizens, but if he really was the altruistic person that this film tries to makes us believe, he would have been more concerned about the plight of the people and less with portraying himself as this selfless do-gooder. This culminates in the scene when, towards the end - all the money came in already- the artist asks the black underdog if, at the very beginning when this crazy artist showed up on the dump, and told him about his vision of making art out of garbage, if he (the underdog) had realistically believed it would amount to anything, let alone a major show at the National Museum in Rio, the underdog is humbled into sheer awe, when in fact he should have answered: Well, as you had a full camera team with you, to document every step you did, I had an inkling that the whole thing would have an happy ending:' And maybe he even said something like that but it sure as hell got cut out for the final edit, cause although the director wants us to believe otherwise, the whole thing seems staged.

Claudio Carvalho The Brazilian artist Vik Muniz rooted in New York decides to make the difference and travels to Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill of the world in the outskirt of Rio de Janeiro, with the intention to help the pickers to improve their lives using his art. Vik recalls an event when he was very poor and lived in Brazil. He tried to break up a fight between two men, and he was shot when he was walking to his car. Later the shooter gave him some money that allowed Vik to travel to USA.Vik and his friend Fábio spend two years in Jardim Gramacho and get closer to a group of pickers of recyclable materials and takes pictures of them. He uses his talent to make art using recyclable material and photographs the results. Then he travels to London and sells one of the portraits in an auction. With the money, the pickers buy a truck, equipment and build a leaning center and a library. The pickers that worked with him leans how to improve their lives and leave Jardim Gramacho. "Waste Land" is a must see uplifting documentary that shows another side of Rio de Janeiro unusual in the cinema: the lives of people that earn their lives honestly working in the greatest landfill of the world and how they could improve their lives with social investment.Vik Muniz gives a lesson to our corrupt politicians that embezzle money that are dedicated to people of the lower classes and shows how it is possible to improve lives using the money properly. His humanitarian work should be publicized worldwide and specially in my country. Maybe in the future, the president and politicians would be outraged not with handcuffed corrupts but with the damage that corruption causes to our people. My vote is nine.Title (Brazil): "Lixo Extraordinário" ("Extraordinary Garbage")

bandw 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.