Lucy Walker’s Waste Land

Waste Land is the second notable “real-time” documentary this year. The first was Catfish, which was quite different. “Real-time” means that the action occurs completely in front of the camera, without narration or talking heads telling or paraphrasing the story. Waste Land isn’t completely “real-time” like the facebook follies Catfish, but all of its powerful moments come from the fact that Lucy Walker’s camera was there to see the important events in the story rather than have them summarized.

Waste Land is more akin to Walker’s first film and breakout Devil’s Playground than her previous release this year Countdown to Zero. Countdown felt much of Lawrence Bender’s, producer of An Inconvenient Truth, influence, featuring many talking heads and focusing solely on the political issues rather than the people. There was little live footage, but rather a lot of summary. In Waste Land, we get to watch everything that “happens” in this story. Walker and her camera are there for everything.

The film is the story of Brazilian artist Vic Muniz creating an artwork out of Rio’s largest landfill and the “pickers” who work there, rummaging through garbage to find recyclable materials. In the film, the camera is there when Muniz and his partner decide to do this project. It follows Muniz as he first goes to the landfill and meets those who turn into our cast of characters. The film documents their entire arcs as they pertain to the story.

The story depicts the inspiration for the artwork, Muniz tells us what he’s thinking as he devises his methods. We watch him create the art. Then we watch him sell it, and later the effect it has on the people who inspired it. In this case, Muniz donated all proceeds to the pickers.

This film most certainly falls under the social issue documentary banner. The social issues, or rather the content, are not what make the film powerful though. Any strong emotional reactions to this film come less from the content than the form. The material here is nothing new. What’s unique is the way it is told.

People say all the time “that needs to be a movie,” but usually their story only insures a good magazine article or dinner conversation. Only good movies should be movies. So the reason why this documentary is good is because Lucy Walker did a good job at being there to capture the story, having the skill to shoot it in a way that didn’t manipulate or taint the action, and then cut it together like a three-act scripted feature narrative.

Arthouse Films released Waste Land in theaters in October.