ScreenWize

True story: when I was a wee thing, my first real job was over the border in an international hamburger restaurant. One night I severed the top of my pinkie finger off on the lettuce bin and my manager went and grabbed my time card and clocked me off for the night before he called me an ambulance – because obviously I was no longer working. So you might imagine the delight I have in films that stick it to the fast-food industry. I was in paroxysms when Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me came out, even more so when people actually flocked to see it. Robert Keener’s Oscar-nominated Documentary Food, Inc casts it net much wider and asks us to think about what we eat and why. He begins with the imagery the food and advertising industry uses to sell us their wares, of idealised farmhouses, and then leads us into the reality that is more about the factory than the farm.
As a piece of investigative journalism, it does a terrific job examining the real price paid for nice plump chicken breasts, disease-resistant soya beans and hamburger for all.
There are people who will be startled by the revelations in Food, Inc, but there is nothing new here for anyone with their eyes open. However, Kenner does a great job pulling together the modern story of commercialised food. He finds the rare farmer who will brave the lawyers of the big companies and speak to him, the occasional worker who helps him sneak hidden cameras onto the factory floor. The slaughterhouse scenes are extremely disturbing, though his agenda isn’t pro-vegetarian but rather an examination of the human health aspects of production-line food processing techniques.

In the most moving segment we follow Barbara Kowalcyk around Washington, lobbying for food safety. He son Kevin died aged four after eating an E. coli contaminated hamburger, and she pours her passion into saving other parents from the same fate as her. We meet a family of migrant workers and understand how easy it is to get trapped into a cycle of poor nutrition. But there are also positive stories, like giant Walmart embracing the organic industry, even if it is for purely commercial reasons. This is an American-centric look at food and the big business empires that control it, and I would be interested to see it promote discussion about our own industries, regulations and practices. Keener’s film really belongs is on our school curricula, so that its messages reach those who will most benefit from it.

Rating:

CK

Filed Under: Reviews by Simon