Actually China (in the subtopic line) is the microcosm that reflects the world in this film.

Very interesting film. Opens with an 8 minute dolly shot through a factory. The scope of these "landscapes" is astounding. Shots of construction on the Three Gorges Dam boggle the mind.

My wife and I both thought the film had a great deal in common with L'espirit des lieux (The Spirit of Places) which looks at rural Quebec 35 years after a series of photographs. Both had a very patient pace. The kinds of changes in the landscapes are very different, but the sense of loss and progress are strongly found in both.

Wow. I caught this film back in 2006, and I've seen it on various top-ten lists since. Have we really never had a thread on this, until now?

I must see this again. There are some absolutely stunning images in here. This movie, more than any other (at least in recent memory), has affected the way I think about our relationship to technology and the environment. You can't see those mountains of "retired" cell phones and whatnot without looking very differently at the laptops and DVD players etc. that have passed through your life, and are probably continuing to pass through your life.

This film probably changed my thinking more than any other film since, say, Last Temptation of Christ. Just missed cracking my top ten for the year because it's so relentlessly arty. Worked great for me, but I doubt it will for general audiences. Not "entertaining" enough.

Hey, this film might make a very interesting double-bill with Pixar's Wall-E. How ironic, of course, that Pixar relies on all the high-tech stuff that is "part of the problem". As, of course, do the makers of Manufacturing Landscapes themselves -- a fact that they acknowledge within the film, IIRC.