THE SALT OF THE EARTH (Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado). 110 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (April 10). Rating: NNNN
Where to watch: iTunes
Given its Oscar nomination for best documentary feature, people might be surprised that The Salt Of The Earth is a fairly conventional biography made somewhat more intimate by a wealth of stills and home-movie footage. But that formal simplicity is merely a way of ensuring its points land clearly and without interference.
It’s about the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. Co-directors Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado (Sebastião’s son) track their subject’s career through more than 30 years of photographs, framing his obsession with exploited labourers and displaced peoples in the context of his student days in Paris and his own family history.
Examining Salgado’s career in chronological order – and filling the screen with the gorgeous, horrifying images he’s captured – Wenders and Ribeiro Salgado follow him through the oil fires of Kuwait after the first Gulf War and into the Rwandan and Serbian genocides, which sent the photographer into a profound depression.
Salgado discusses it all for the camera, though of course the most powerful emotions come through in the images he brought back.
