← Back to Reviews
in
Our Daily Bread
The food chain has some curious links
More than one man went to mow
Most of the food that passes our lips is prepared using a mixture of daunting technology and repetitive acts. This film documents some of those 'hidden' processes. Simple as that.
You are what you reap
This is documentary in a very 'pure' form - the director has specifically set out to observe, not to judge. There's no emotive soundtrack, intrusive editorialising or driving narrative. What you get instead is the hypnotic banality of field & factory work, combined with the hypnotic peculiarity of the 'robots' churning away behind the scenes. And it's frequently fascinating.
The reliance on ambient-sound alone proves particularly effective - even familiar scenes such as patiently-advancing combine harvesters gain some gravitas when their sheer size reverberates noisily towards the screen. But beyond the rush and swoop of even the more surprising machinery, lies the strange juxtaposition of the natural and the artificial. From the genteel greenhouse that is clearly alongside a (muffled) urban station, to the reams of robotic arms mimicking the timely sweeps of trance-limbed farmhands, an intriguing blend of dissonance and symmetry is brought to the table.
Despite the director's unblinking gaze the camera does still shy from some of the less palatable facts. You'll see few lives being ended, but a great abundance of strangely-distant acts. Chickens starting and ending their lives in drawers, cows puzzlingly blasted with straw, and pig carcasses circling a carbolic-sprinkled vision of hell. Thankfully humour and humanity still regularly swim to the fore, from convivial communal meals to the strangest window view you'll ever see. (Which I don't want to give away. Just like I'll stay quiet about the strange conjunction of a stick and a giant metal hand). One thing I will say though is something I never thought I would: salt mining has to be seen to be believed. There's always a bit of wonder around the corner in this film.
Without a Baraka-style soundtrack to forge you forcefully down a wild-urban stream you're left with the cumulative steady pulse of industrial dominion over animals, workforces & plants.
But whether settled on a cart inching between dewy vines, or swooping on a 'Bond-villain' monorail through uber-sized barns, the camera catches it all very well indeed.
Doesn't always overturn as much earth as you'd like, and intermittently like watching radishes ripen, it still blows some plastic cobwebs off our easily-satiated view of food's role in our lives.
The food chain has some curious links
|
More than one man went to mow
Most of the food that passes our lips is prepared using a mixture of daunting technology and repetitive acts. This film documents some of those 'hidden' processes. Simple as that.
You are what you reap
This is documentary in a very 'pure' form - the director has specifically set out to observe, not to judge. There's no emotive soundtrack, intrusive editorialising or driving narrative. What you get instead is the hypnotic banality of field & factory work, combined with the hypnotic peculiarity of the 'robots' churning away behind the scenes. And it's frequently fascinating.
The reliance on ambient-sound alone proves particularly effective - even familiar scenes such as patiently-advancing combine harvesters gain some gravitas when their sheer size reverberates noisily towards the screen. But beyond the rush and swoop of even the more surprising machinery, lies the strange juxtaposition of the natural and the artificial. From the genteel greenhouse that is clearly alongside a (muffled) urban station, to the reams of robotic arms mimicking the timely sweeps of trance-limbed farmhands, an intriguing blend of dissonance and symmetry is brought to the table.
|
Without a Baraka-style soundtrack to forge you forcefully down a wild-urban stream you're left with the cumulative steady pulse of industrial dominion over animals, workforces & plants.
But whether settled on a cart inching between dewy vines, or swooping on a 'Bond-villain' monorail through uber-sized barns, the camera catches it all very well indeed.
Doesn't always overturn as much earth as you'd like, and intermittently like watching radishes ripen, it still blows some plastic cobwebs off our easily-satiated view of food's role in our lives.
|