Is it too beautiful?


I often view "3rd world countries", as these harsh places where hunger, crime, sweatshop conditions, and just a host of other negative conotations stand out, so when i saw this film, with it's beautiful images, and uplifting soundtrack, i was wondering how much of it was true, and how much of it was just romanticizing the "noble savage," and taking these countries completely out of context by showing how beautiful it all is? I think that it's good to "third world" countries, showing them this way, as all too often people have only those negative connotations, and so they want to go there to convert people, or to westernize them, in which we lose all that cultural diversity, but i think there perhaps should have been more of a balance, as this movie focuses too much on the positives, IMO, and almost makes it look like hard labor is a joy for many of the workers who sing and move like a dance while mining, and that some of these areas are paradises. I assume that people living there agree that it is both beautiful, but also a hard life, one perhaps worth the labor, though many are steadily turning towards the west to have the advantages of western civilization do the labor for them, which I'm not so sure is necessarily bad. I agree technology is messing up the planet and our social interactions, even our sense of what is right, wrong, true happiness, etc., but at the very same time i get lot's of happiness from being on the computer writing this, to watching my DVD of Powaqqatsi, to listening to CD's, etc. Do other people find this conflict with too much western civilization, and how do we resolve it, do we stop using the technology? can we go back to the times before it infiltrated every aspect of our life?

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Interesting comments.

My first reaction to the film was actually completely the opposite. I thought it was almost misanthropic- the film seems to portray people as bacteria, as a virus. People seem to be victims of themselves in this movie; they've produced this world, and now they have to face the consequences of living with people who are poorer than them, living in a world of clashing cultures, living in a world of only finite resources that will eventually run out.

Yes, the film was beautifully shot, but I thought that made the scenes in third world countries seem even more powerful. The bleakness of their lives compared to the beauty of the image was quite unsettling. Indeed, we can sit back and enjoy this work of art in the comfort of our Westernized, luxurious homes, but these people don't have these opportunities. Whether or not this was the intention of the filmmaker is beside the point, I think; this film definitely forces us to confront our position as spectators. There is no dialogue; with this film, you are left to provide your own.

"Without you, I'm nothing"

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just out of curiousity, have you ever heard of paragraphs?

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I dunno what movie were you watching, emisn0. But certainly we didn't watch the same movie.

i.e you typed this: "almost makes it look like hard labor is a joy for many of the workers who sing and move like a dance while mining".

What??? Didn't you see the body of a minerworker who were carried by his pals because a rock knocked him out?

How come to work in such extreme conditions could be interpreted by anyone as a "joy"???

Besides you have a very western-centered mind. Using old colonialist terms from the XVIII and XIX centuries such as "noble savages".
People from poor countries ain't "noble savages", they are "human beings" just like you.
Plus criminality is everywhere. Crime rates are high in many 1st world countries (USA has one of the highest crime rates of the world, higher than most third world countries).

Honestly I don't know what movie were you watching.

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Of course it's beautiful. Most of the settings are gorgeously natural. What's ugly about the film is the onslaught of technological civilization.

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