Working in an investigative journalism tradition once honed and now abandoned by U.S. television networks, Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc. is a non-sensationalist yet quietly infuriating exposé of U.S. chicken, cattle and corn production. If the phrase “essential viewing” still has any meaning, it applies to this documentary.
Like fine-grain sandpaper applied to the polished veneer of a dining-room table, Food, Inc. diligently reveals the truth behind the cheerful advertising and rainbow-hued packaging that conspire to create the illusion of healthful, amber waves of grain. Forget about the cycles of nature and the family farm; a handful of companies control and/or dictate American meat and agricultural production. Worse, they’ve instituted a ruthless factory approach that they’ve successfully hidden from the public.
Our guides are the leading chroniclers of the domestic food industry, Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), whose unassailable credibility is enhanced by their low-key but impassioned demeanors. I recognize that firebrands and radicals are essential for change, but it’s also important to have the facts and strong arguments on one’s side. Or perhaps I simply appreciate the thoughtful gravitas of articulate middle-aged men (even those clad in denim work shirts) over the bouncy narcissism and gimmickry displayed by Morgan Spurlock in Super Size Me, his 2004 saga of eating nothing but fast food for a month.
It’s not the filmmaking in Food, Inc. that commands our attention, admittedly, but the content. (That’s the bottom line for most people when it comes to nonfiction, notwithstanding my quixotic insistence on calling attention to the craft and the art of documentary.) From Kentucky to Nebraska to Virginia, Kenner shows us chicken coops run by Tyson contractors and packing plants churning out beef for drive-through burgers. The footage is unpleasant but rarely harrowing or grisly; his intent isn’t to shock us or gross us out but to make us look at the real-world conditions of animals raised for meat.