Review by Jeffrey M. Anderson
I can’t think of a more urgent, day-by-day issue for a feature documentary than food. Directed by Robert Kenner, Food, Inc. plays a bit like a collection of greatest hits from Super Size Me, Fast Food Nation and King Corn. But the film’s bright, cheerful tone, colorful graphics and bite-sized snippets will hopefully appeal to larger crowd, thereby spreading this vital information to new areas.
In Food, Inc. we meet an organic farmer who raises healthy, grass-fed cattle (rather than the more common, corporate corn-fed cattle). He refuses to sell his goods on a Wal-Mart scale and is perfectly happy running a small farmer’s market in his own community. We also meet Gary Hirschberg, the man behind Stonyfield organic yogurt, who is thrilled that Wal-Mart has agreed to sell his product. (He argues that he wants to be a Goliath fighting a Goliath.) Another farmer insists on growing regular soybeans, but is constantly threatened by a huge corporation that holds the patent for genetically altered soybeans. Most heartbreakingly, we meet Barbara Kowalcyk, whose 2-1/2 year old son went from being healthy to dead in a matter of days after eating a hamburger tainted with E. coli. She since become a food safety advocate, traveling from office to office to meet with politicians and ask for their help. Oddly, she’s not allowed to talk about the food item in question, or she can be sued. That’s the type of law currently in place protecting the food corporations and not the consumer.
The main theme of Food, Inc., for the most part has to do with the second part of its title, the “incorporated” part. What looks like a lot of variety in the supermarket is actually controlled and manufactured by only a few companies, and they do their best to hide this information. Like the making of hot dogs, the corporations deliberately want us not to ask questions or think about where our food comes from. The movie tries to leave off on a positive note, though it will undoubtedly be a long, hard road to get some of these policies changed. Either way, it’s better to know these issues exist than to blithely continue eating in ignorance.
With: Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, Joel Salatin, Barbara Kowalcyk, Gary Hirschberg
Directed by: Robert Kenner
MPAA Rating: PG for some thematic material and disturbing images
Running Time: 94 minutes
Jeffrey M. Anderson is a freelance film critic based in San Francisco. His work has appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, the Oakland Tribune, the San Jose Metro, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Las Vegas Weekly, Cinematical.com, Greencine.com and BayInsider.com. In addition, he maintains his own movie review website, Combustible Celluloid.com. He has served as an Oscar expert on television and a horror expert at film festivals.
NOTE: On August 19th there will be a discussion after the 7:30 screening with local growers talking about the whole “buy local” movement and how lucky we are to be living in an area with such a rich source of local/organic foods.
