|
|
EATING ANIMALS
Director: Christopher Dillon Quinn MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:34 Release Date: 6/15/18 (limited); 7/13/18 (wider) |
|
Capsule review by Mark Dujsik | July 12, 2018 Eating Animals, a documentary based on Jonathan Safran Foer's non-fiction book of the same name, is a series of arguments and a collection of pieces of evidence without a case. The central issue is industrial farming—how it has stifled the tradition of independent farms, caused financial hardship to those farmers who sign up for such enterprises, engendered an incestuous relationship between the government and big corporations, damaged the environment, and caused cruelty against animals. The movie gives us good reason to believe all of this is true and accurate, but what do we do about it? The answers are as trite as the documentary is scattered. We meet an abundance of people here: from a few independent farmers, to contracted farmers with big companies who have turned to whistleblowers, and to activists for animal welfare. Their stories are disheartening and occasionally infuriating, such as how the company farmers are promised financial success but routinely put into debt—all the while being encouraged to screw over their fellow farmers. There is behind-the-scenes footage of farms that show how selective breeding has turned chickens and cows into weak, overweight shells of pain and misery, as well as within slaughterhouses—now euphemistically dubbed "processing plants"—where animals are more or less tortured before being killed. There's a lot about which to be angry, but to director Christopher Dillon Quinn's credit, he maintains a calm tone to the movie (It's aided by Natalie Portman's tranquil readings of passages from Foer's book). This approach also, though, keeps us at a safe distance from the images on screen and the information related by the movie's lineup of talking heads. The most effective sections focus on specific individuals, including a turkey farmer whose business is in trouble, a contract farmer who might face trouble for revealing what's happening to his chickens, and a former veterinarian at a government facility that runs twisted experiments on livestock. There are, perhaps, too many stories and too many points for any of this register in a meaningful way. Eating Animals isn't a screed against the act contained in its title, but if it had been, at least it would have been making a specific point. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
Buy Related Products
|
