Our Daily Bread

Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s look at industrialized food production in Europe is aestheticized rather than muckraking, but effective nonetheless. There is no narration, dialogue, music, or other form of contextualization -- just classically composed and lingering shots of machines and humans at work, along with animals and vegetables subjected to massive and highly mechanized procedures. This open-ended visual meditation allows you to take away an appreciation of ingenuity and impressive rationalization, or horror at denaturalization, institutionalized cruelty, and excessive use of fossil fuels. For myself and most viewers, the reaction to agricultural inhumanity is likely to be a vow to obtain as much food as possible grown locally and organically. A good companion to Richard Linklater’s docudrama, Fast Food Nation. (2006, Sund/T, n.) *7* (MC-86.)