Manufactured Landscapes
Zeitgeist Films | Release Date: June 20, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
79
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 16 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Burtynsky's keen sense of color, pattern and composition are obvious from his work, but equally acute are his thoughts on how he as an artist as well as an inhabitant of the planet fits into the larger scheme of things. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Jennifer Baichwal's gorgeous documentary Manufactured Landscapes amplifies the powerful work of Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian artist who specializes in large-scale photographs of terrain transformed by civilization into rivers and tides of industrial ugliness. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Manufactured Landscapes may tell you more about how the 21st century world actually works than you really want to know, but it's a heartbreaking, beautiful, awful and awesome film. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeStaff (Not credited)
An eloquent ecological warning. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleKenneth Baker
Leaves its audience with many troubling questions. Among them: Should a film console us with its own brilliance when it aims to discomfit us with its content? Read full review
80
VarietyPeter Debruge
This landmark glimpse into China's modern-day industrial revolution becomes something more -- a profound, open-ended meditation on man's physical impact on his environment. Read full review
80
Village VoiceJim Ridley
Nothing illustrates the monstrosity of globalized commerce more vividly than the lateral tracking shot that opens Jennifer Baichwal's mesmerizing documentary Manufactured Landscapes. Read full review
80
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Manufactured Landscapes makes an inelegant point elegantly. The point: Humanity is altering the landscape drastically and by implication irrevocably. Read full review
75
New York PostV.A. Musetto
Burtynsky doesn't preach. He's content to let viewers make up their own minds from his eye-opening and eye-pleasing images. Read full review
70
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
Slow in places, but the feeling of foreboding you’ll take away from it is undeniable. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeFore
The result is a highly unusual viewing experience that stimulates the senses and the conscience simultaneously. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Absorbing if unsettling documentary. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
The same virtue doesn't apply to his commentary, which is too general to rise above the pedestrian; the movie works best traveling from the eye straight to the conscience. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
What's left off the table is a meaningful examination of environmental artists' responsibility to the environment they depict, and the question of whether all truly great art leaves behind a little toxic waste of its own. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleJosh Rosenblatt
Baichwal is comfortable with those moral and aesthetic ambiguities as well, and, as a result, she’s created a visual poem of devastation that makes one question one’s entire relationship to the world. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Feels constrained and rather dutiful, no matter how passionate these people are about what they're observing. Read full review
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