The Salt of the Earth (2014)

I found the documentary a bit boring. The story about this family and his kids etc didnt make sense to me and i didnt like the scenario or wenders close up of the photographer all the time. I found this a very narcissistic film and not a great story.

The sound of 50,000 people in a gold mine in Brazil takes one back to the time the pyramids were built. You may hear the gold whispering. Here there are slaves to the idea of getting rich. Among the Tarahumera of Mexico no one walks so much as flies. Witness in the Balkans, Iraq, Rwanda and elsewhere how contagious hatred can be. The beautiful and terrible images of photographer Sebastião Salgado are seared in my consciousness like a profound dream. This is thanks to the masterful storytelling by the documentary filmmakers. They take viewers around the world and on waves of emotion, to understand photographer Sebastião Salgado's life and unique way of seeing things.The portrait is extremely powerful. Sebastião's adventures brought him in contact with diverse peoples with very different senses of time, rhythms and ways of thinking. Behind every mountain, in each person's eyes, there is a compelling story. The film went in surprising directions and is unpredictable. This may be different if you are familiar with Sebastião and his work, which I was not. The real life, words, images and stories in this film are enthralling. It is fascinating to understand what healed Sebastião's despair, but to reveal this would mar the ending, which I will not do. You should see for yourself! Available on Netflix.

Never mind the documentary side of things, this is very much a photography watching paradise. Yes, as you can imagine, there is a bit of storytelling about the photographer himself, but the salt of the earth is not pretending to be a tabloid in video format. Who cares anyway? I don't. All I want to see is more and more work by this great man. Sincerely, during the first 1H30 of the movie, until he returns to Brazil, I did not go 1 minute of the film without being awed by the marvelous visuals I was witnessing. It is surely one of the most enjoyable documentaries I have ever seen. I feel like I have seen the planet with completely different eyes. Absolutely, compulsory viewing for photographers, planet lovers, and anyone with a mild interest for things.

Many times a son asks why his father was absent so much when he was young, or perhaps why he is uncommunicative. Later in life he discovers that his father had some special task to do or that he was not able to discuss his work. In the case of Juliano Salgado he discovers first hand what is involved in capturing nature in all its beauty while filming his father at work. Sebastião's many trips to Africa obviously took him away for long periods of time, but the results of his work are a historical record of some of mankind's horrible deeds. The film describes the socio political context of Brazil in the 60s and 70s which is important to understand the trajectory of the young couple in their exile to France and their joint partnership in photography. The black and white scenes of early Brazil and the grandfather's ranch are wonderful. The ending is also well chosen to give us hope for the future, in the successful reclamation of the property by replanting the mata atlântica.