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cast—Greg Kinner of “Little Miss Sunshine” plays a marketing executive & Avril Lavigne is an animal rights activist—the film struck a different chord than the book it took its name from. The movie “Fast Food Nation” danced along the lines of narrative & exposé, never quite getting the formula right. The fictional “Mickey’s” was a clear standin for McDonald’s, & although the story of immigrant meatpackers proved heart wrenching, the book gave real names & faces to the industry’s victims while the screen showed just characters. “Food, Inc.” managed to circumvent those issues by taking the form of a documentary. Director Robert Kenner tactfully weaves graphics between interviews & undercover footage, painting a coherent picture of the staggering reach of the American food system. Looking at immi-
gration, corporate law, the environment, & health, the film proves that to eat is always a political act. “Food, Inc.” even gets into the philosophical conundrums of modern agriculture. “There are no seasons in the American supermarket. Now there are tomatoes all year round, grown halfway around the world, picked when it was green, & ripened with ethylene gas. Although it looks like a tomato, it’s kind of a notional tomato. It’s the idea of a tomato,” remarks Michael Pollan. If you don’t have time to make it through the full course of food journalism & film—Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation,” Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Bourette’s “Meat, A Love Story,” to name a few—then “Food, Inc.” offers up a perfect, though terrifying, view into the cogs of the American food machine.
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