RSS
Home
Review of Food, Inc
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
© Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media
Warning: if you go to see Food, Inc., you will never want to eat again. Alright, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration but you'll probably feel that way for a good hour after you've seen it. The next time you go to your favorite grocery store, however, you'll feel like the aisles are filled with nothing but lies. So why would you want to see a movie like Food, Inc. at the Red River Theatres this weekend? Because the burden of knowledge serves us better than the bliss of ignorance. And because The Ugly Truth and G-Force look like total pieces of crap.
Our eating habits have changed more in the last 50 years than they have in the last 10,000, notes one of the narrators of the film. From there, Food, Inc. explores what has changed and why and the reasons given are by and large not good. The explosion of fast food restaurants in the 1950s set off a chain reaction that has slowly caused this country's source of food to nearly revert to the days of Upton Sinclair's early 20th century exposé, The Jungle. Not nearly as bad, certainly, but relatively speaking, it's closer to that than it should be. Director Robert Kenner looks at all sides of the issue except from the point of view of the corporations who are made out to be the bad guys in all of this. They apparently declined to be interviewed for this documentary.
This brings up the important fact that this is a documentary and as Michael Moore has proven time and time again, it's easy to bend and twist facts to suit whatever opinion the filmmaker holds. In the case of Moore, he doesn't make documentaries so much as he makes "cinematic editorials." But Food, Inc. doesn't have the feeling of someone hellbent on ruining an entire industry. Kenner, rather than simply present the audience with nothing but doom and gloom and leaving it at that, fills the third and final part of the film with feasible solutions to the current predicament the food industry finds itself in. There are things the corporations can do and there are things we the consumer can do to affect a positive change. The best documentaries are the ones that cause the audience to view things differently, inspire a change in our daily actions and educate without preaching. On each of those levels, Food, Inc. wildly succeeds.
Related Articles:
Comments
