I saw this at the Cork Film Festival this weekend. Unfortunately the director couldn't make it due to family illness.
Overall I felt the message was a bit muddled at times - particularly when Jeremy Irons visits the orphanages in Vietnam - and it dragged in parts. They spend an awful lot of time interviewing people involved in various incinerators around the world but the message is always the same so after a while it gets a bit boring. When they focus on the sea and the amount of plastic in it again they get different people to say the same thing which again gets a little irritating. Probably the most glaring example of this is the very beginning when it focuses on the trash mountain in Lebanon that is leaking into the sea. It alternates between long shots of the mountain, to Jeremy sitting on a trash covered beach looking pensive, then back to the mountain, then Jeremy.... I felt like standing up and going "OK I GET IT!! LET'S MOVE ON!!" Having said that, Jeremy was a great choice of protagonist as he is both engaging and humane in terms of those that he encounters, and quite funny at times too. It ends on an optimistic note which is important for these kinds of documentaries as most of the content is fairly depressing. But I feel they could easily shaved at least 20 minutes off the running time without in any way affecting the narrative.
Overall I felt the message was a bit muddled at times - particularly when Jeremy Irons visits the orphanages in Vietnam - and it dragged in parts. They spend an awful lot of time interviewing people involved in various incinerators around the world but the message is always the same so after a while it gets a bit boring. When they focus on the sea and the amount of plastic in it again they get different people to say the same thing which again gets a little irritating. Probably the most glaring example of this is the very beginning when it focuses on the trash mountain in Lebanon that is leaking into the sea. It alternates between long shots of the mountain, to Jeremy sitting on a trash covered beach looking pensive, then back to the mountain, then Jeremy.... I felt like standing up and going "OK I GET IT!! LET'S MOVE ON!!" Having said that, Jeremy was a great choice of protagonist as he is both engaging and humane in terms of those that he encounters, and quite funny at times too. It ends on an optimistic note which is important for these kinds of documentaries as most of the content is fairly depressing. But I feel they could easily shaved at least 20 minutes off the running time without in any way affecting the narrative.