Matter Out of Place (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, 2022) (Patreon)

I have been a fairly consistent champion of the documentaries of Nikolaus Geyrhalter. He is an Austrian formalist whose visual essays ask us to look closely at aspects of the world typically hidden from view. At their best -- Our Daily Bread (2005), 7915 KM (2008), Over the Years (2015) -- Geyrhalter's films meet the hidden elements of our existence with an impassive, methodical gaze, one that demands patience as well as concentration. It's only by drawing connections between Geyrhalter's various examples that an implicit argument emerges. These are subtle, even passive-aggressive films that ask much of the viewer but offer considerable rewards.

2019's Earth, about the massive excavation and construction projects that are transforming the planet (i.e., the anthropocene), was the first of Geyrhalter's films that seemed overly explicit in its approach. Geyrhalter's films have always adopted a leftist attitude towards global crises and possible solutions, but Earth was the first that felt like it could have been made by nearly any well-meaning eco-documentarian. In some respects, Matter Out of Place moves even further in this understandable but disappointing direction.

It's a film about trash: how we produce it, collect it, and move it around. Sometimes we funnel it into designated spaces like landfills; other times we just let it drift onto beaches, or sink to the bottom of the sea. Like the best Geyrhalter films, Matter shows us things most of us have never seen before. I had no idea that the refuse in Alpine ski resorts is loaded into standard garbage trucks, which are then suspended from giant cable-cars, which ferry them down the mountain to the waste management plant on the outskirts of town. I was also surprised to see Geyrhalter conclude with, of all things, Burning Man as an example of ethical recreation, the event concluded with a methodical "leave no trace" rubbish collection effort, managed by festival volunteers.

But a lot of Matter Out of Place just shows trash collection around the world: Nepal, Albania, the Maldives, Austria, etc. And while Geyrhalter clearly wants to honor those ordinary people who devote their time to cleaning up the world's mess, there's a bothersome individualist bent to this film. Corporate polluters are not included in this panorama. The trash itself, and the effort to remove it, all happens at the consumer level. I guess a shore covered in plastic bottles is more "photogenic," in its way, that mercury-laden lakes and arsenic in the water table. But we rely on Geyrhalter to look beyond the obvious.

Also, one sequence was incredibly reminiscent of Toy Story 3, which actually conveyed the horror of mass refuse much more viscerally.