untitled
FAST
FOOD NATION
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Written by: Eric Schlosser and Richard Linklater
Internet
Movie
Database Entry for full details
GRADE: B
2006.
There’s
shit in the meat. Literally. And it’s flavored by scented
laboratory chemicals, and, of course, the kids making the sandwiches
are spitting in them. Still want to eat hamburgers? Well,
Linklater’s just getting started!
Eric Schlosser, along with Linklater, adapated his non-fiction book of
the same name, the now classic muckraking, neo-Sinclairian expose of
the American fast-food industry, into narrative fiction, comprised of
three character-driven stories centered around a not-so-fictitious fast
food chain called “Mickey’s”: one involves Greg
Kinnear as a corporate honcho; another concerns Wilmer Valderrama and
the exceptional Catalina Sandino Moreno as border-crossing,
undocumented workers who find employment at a slaughterhouse; and the
last finds Ashley Johnson playing an idealistic teenage cashier, er,
"associate" who undergoes a socio-political awakening. Basically,
according to the film, the burger industry works like this: Mexicans
make ‘em, teenagers sell ‘em, and middle-aged, fair-skinned
men reap the profits.
Fast Food Nation's central problem is that Linklater is such an old, white man. It's hard to believe he's the same guy who made Slacker,
as the scenes centered around the youth are so artificial and
hamfisted—one actually propounds, "right now I can't think of
anything more patriotic than violating the Patriot
Act"—especially because they look like Hollywood "teens" more
than they look like real kids. Linklater's got just as terrible a
handle on Hispanics, as well; the plight of the immigrants in Fast Food Nation,
who are relentlessly abused and exploited by the meat-packing plant,
their bosses, and the soundtrack, is handled in a terribly melodramatic
style, playing out like a telenovela with better film stock. In
contrast, however, Kinnear's scenes, as a VP of Marketing on an odyssey
to discover how the shit gets into the meat, work exceptionally well.
Linklater, and Schlosser from what I can tell, are middle-aged,
middle-class, Caucasian males, and they have a good handle on the
details of what the experience is like, from pornography in hotel rooms
to perky, pesky clerks. It isn't exactly the filmmakers' fault, but the
film turns out to be a little over-ambitious.
But fashioning such a contrived and formally mediocre movie may
ultimately work in the filmmakers', and the film's, favor, since that's
what American audiences are used to, and generally what they expect
from a movie. Fast Food Nation's failures as a piece of
filmmaking are offset somewhat, for me, by its noble thematic
intentions. While it could’ve worked better as a freeform indie
ramble less concerned with histrionically tackling "all sides of the
issue", its more conservative, by-the-books approach—even if it
doesn’t always work—has the potential to attract a larger,
more mainstream audience who should see the film for its message; he
may just yet reach those who aren’t already singing in the choir.
It's Fast Food Nation for Dummies.
And after all, though it has its weaknesses, it’s not an
altogether irredeemable movie-it even has a share of great moments,
such as when tears fall from Moreno’s eyes as she watches cattle
intestines slide down a conveyor belt (less literal than metaphoric),
or the allegorical scene in which some college fauxradicals cut down a
fence to free the slated-for-slaughter cattle within. (The cows
don’t budge.) Regardless of its shortcomings, those who need to
see it ought to; as Bruce Willis, in a cameo, puts it, “we all
have to eat a little shit from time to time.”
Despite Linklater’s vegetarian ethos, Fast Food Nation doesn’t
argue for an end to meat eating period so much as it argues that
Americans ought to refrain from eating industrial, factory-farmed meat;
it’s an approach more philosophical than sermonic. That is,
moreso than stopping the merciless slaughter of animals—though
that’s important—the filmmakers argue that Americans need
to reclaim the moral and spiritual core that they've surrendered, of
which the prevalence of the fast food industry, and the tacit approval
of its practices, is indicative, or symptomatic. The fast food industry
doesn't just hurt animals but people, too, and not just illegal
immigrants but the whole collective national character; the footage
near the film's end of the killing floor is to be understood
figuratively as well as literally. (You are what you eat.) After all,
the country's in trouble, as the film points out: earthen land is paved
over (what else is new?) as ranches are transformed into exurbs;
animals and human beings are trampled and debased; and the spectre of
methamphetamine's extirpation lurks in every corner. (Just to cite a
few problems.) Kris Kristofferson, in a cameo as a rancher, gets to
deliver the film’s thesis line: “this ain’t about
good people vs. bad people, it’s about the machine that’s
taking over this country.” Or, more bluntly America, it’s
about the fact that there’s shit in your meat. --
Henry Stewart
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