November 25, 2009: Food, Inc.
First off, I suppose I should note that this was the first time I really thought about whether finishing a movie after midnight counts as me having watched it on the day that the evening is a part of, or the next day. I’m going to declare that I’ll go with the “TV day”, which as anyone who reads their local newspaper TV magazine listing knows, means that the day starts and ends at 6am. I don’t seem to have managed to go for any trilogy marathons since I began writing these reviews, but it’s possible someday that when I do manage it, the final film will finish after 6am and be attributed to the following day. For the record, I state my movie viewing date as when I finish and not when I start – sometimes weeks can go by between those two times!
So I found myself watching Food, Inc. late one evening. I had been looking forward to this one, since it seemed to have the potential to be a documentary that I would enjoy. It’s about the industrialization of food production, primarily in the US, focusing the lion’s share of the run time on meat and corn.
This is a fairly lightweight documentary, but covering heavy subject matter and just what I was looking for. Chicken farming results in inhumane conditions for both the chickens and the farmers. Overhead shots of cattle feedlots surrounding huge abbatoirs are harrowing. Subsidies and over-processing result in nutritionally weak corn-based products being cheaper than healthy food, which makes good food choices difficult for poorer families. One well-spoken farmer, who understands the importance of fresh air and sunlight for his chickens (imagine that!) and not exploiting his staff or the animals, shows that meat can be produced in a reasonable way, and not at hugely inflated cost. As is typical in such a documentary, there is the personal-interest story, in this case of a woman who lost her son several years ago to a tragically brief illness from eating E. coli contaminated food – she has gone on to become an advocate for stricter regulations and continually lobbies the government. Of course I feel this woman’s long-standing pain and wouldn’t wish the loss of a child on anyone, but the way her story is presented seems forced and formulaic, almost cheapening her pain.
It’s crazy, some of the things that happen in this world today, and even with the horrible details being brought right to us, many of us don’t change our habits at all. I’m certainly guilty of this, and I appreciate being armed with a little more information so that I can at least make informed choices about my food, even if I don’t always make humane or sustainable ones.
Light documentary about a heavy subject.
Post a Comment