a SIFF 2009 review
Biting Food, Inc. an Organic Debate
Where does our food come from? How is it produced? What is our responsibility as a consumer to make sure the government is looking at for our best interests and health and not that of a handful of multinational corporations? Those are the central questions running through filmmaker Robert Kenner’s (Two Days in October) latest documentary Food, Inc., the answers he comes up with not exactly ones of the warm and fuzzy variety.
A scene from Magnolia Pictures' Food, Inc.
I’ve got to be honest, even though I went in kind of suspecting what the director’s central argument was going to be (interview subjects include Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser – who is also one of the producers – and The Omnivore's Dilemma writer Michael Pollan), I still wasn’t prepared for the sheer amount of disheartening and downright depressing footage he was able to unearth. Shots of food processing plants, meat farms and poultry sheds came close to making me gag, just thinking about the lot of them now almost enough to make me swear off shopping at my local grocery story altogether.
But what ends up making the movie resonate and work are the interviews Kenner conducts with people like Stonybrook Farms’ entrepreneur Gary Hirschberg, professional seed cleaner Moe Parr and food safety advocate Barbara Kowalcyk. Their unique stories grant insight, sometimes tragic, into the rights and the wrongs currently going on in the food industry. Their stories make us think and force us to ponder a world outside of our own limited interpersonal bubble, and like a great piece of investigative journalism it makes viewers realize that real change can only start when it is made at our own familial dinner table.
Is it one-sided? Sure, a little bit, but I appreciate the fact that the director and his produces did actually go the companies in question (like Monsanto, Tyson, Perdue and Smithfield) only to have their requests for interviews be refused. One cannot help but wonder what makes them so afraid and fearful, and even if they didn’t want to speak to the people behind this film the fact that you never see them speak at all should probably tell us all we really need to know.
It’s hard to say too much more about a movie like Food, Inc. What it looks like in its trailers is exactly what it ends up being in feature length. There are no great surprises in the facts it ferrets out, and while some of the solutions sound wonderful it is just as hard to imagine that few (if any) of them will be enacted anytime soon. Be that as it may, Kenner’s documentary is a grabber from the very first frame, and the fact my refrigerator’s vegetable bin suddenly finds itself filled with organics when it never had been before isn’t even close to a coincidence.
Film Rating: êêê1/2 (out of 4)
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