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One man's trash is another man's treasure — and for Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz, the central figure of the multilayered documentary "Waste Land," it's both.
Muniz's specialty is taking found objects and unusual materials and turning them into artworks that illuminate social-justice issues. (One of his best-known early works featured portraits of Caribbean sugar-plantation workers' children, made from granulated sugar.) But his plans, starting in 2007 in Rio de Janeiro, are his most ambitious work yet.
Muniz's plan is to spend two years in one of the world's largest garbage dumps, Rio's Jardim Gramacho. He plans to collect recyclable materials from the trash and use them to create portraits of the pickers — the men and women who scratch out a living by digging through the trash to find plastic, metal and other reusable items. He will hire the pickers he photographs to create the artwork on the arena-size floor of his studio.
In capturing this art project, director Lucy Walker (who profiled sightless mountain climbers in "Blindsight" and Amish teens in "Devil's Playground") splits her focus between Muniz's creative process and the personal back stories of the pickers. Muniz talks about his roots, growing up poor in São Paulo, and how a few twists of fate could have led him to a life picking garbage rather than filling prestigious New York art galleries.
Some of the pickers have worked their entire lives proudly among the trash piles. Others talk about the economic or personal calamities that have led them — temporarily, they hope — to wading through garbage day and night.
And a few, like the labor organizer Tião, have become activists seeking respect and a better life for the pickers.
The movie, in a direct style reminiscent of Zana Briski's Oscar-winning "Born Into Brothels," also explores the thorny issue of what happens to the pickers after Muniz has enlisted them in his work. Late in the movie, he brings Tião to London, where a wall-sized print of one of his "Pictures of Garbage" works is put up for auction. It opens up the question of what happens next to the pickers — and whether, having had a taste of a bigger world, they will go back to Jardim Gramacho.
Walker smartly doesn't let much get between her audience and her subjects. She knows her topic is fascinating, and both Muniz and the pickers make for a compelling story that doesn't need any cinematic embellishment. "Waste Land" begins with Muniz finding art in the trash, but it ends up showing us people, discarded by society, who rediscover their own value.
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Waste Land
A fascinating documentary about art, garbage and the humanity that connects one to the other.
Where • Tower Theatre.
When • Opens today
Rating • Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language, gross scenes and adult themes
Running time • 99 minutes; in English and Portuguese, with subtitles