My review of Fast Food Nation (discuss)
I went to the press preview of this last night. It goes on general release at the end of March. 112 mins, Cert 15.
This film has the potential to be a very powerful tool for change, but the sprawling nature of the story means it won't appeal to those with a short concentration span. I'll summarise it here so that people know what to expect.
Co-directed by Richard Linklater (who did 'Waking Life', and the powerful 'A Scanner Darkly'), it features his characteristic style of all the action being centred around conversation. There is a lot of dialogue in this film, and a lot of characters doing the talking, which is both a strength and a weakness in terms of its ability to convey a lot of easily understandable information.
The film begins in the boardroom of a fictional company called 'Mickey's', whose red and yellow logos and packaging are a not very subtle parody of McDonalds. The marketing team are celebrating the success of their new 'Big One' burger, but there are rumblings of concern about the high levels of faecal matter (ie. cowshit) that lab tests have found in the meat. So 'Don' is dispatched to the packing plant in Colorado to investigate. As he makes his enquiries, we learn that 'everybody knows there's shit in the meat', but the decision-makers just accept it as inevitable, because changing things would be far too complicated and expensive.
As Don's shock and disillusionment grows, the film begins to focus on the lives of two young women at the bottom end of the fast food indiustry. 'Sylvia', a Mexican immigrant who crossed the border with her family to get cash-in-hand work at the meat plant, and 'Amber', a teenage worker at a branch of Mickey's. The bullying and sexual harassment endured by Sylvia's family, the monotony of the work, the danger they face, and their subservience to their superviser, (who exploits his position fully by selling them drugs) is very evident, and there's some very strong acting here.
Amber's story isn't developed as fully, but the conversation with her uncle in which she finally decides to pack in her job and replace hope for a better world with positive action right now (including joining an environmental action group), is one of the highlights of the film.
Practically every issue that most of us will have with the fast food industry is covered by this film, with the exceptions of overpackaging and obesity, which aren't even touched upon (in fact, I didn't spot a single greasy fat person depicted eating a burger at any point).
The cattle ranches used are the ones described in the original book. It's a work of fiction, but the people seem very real, so I think communicates the truth far better than a documentary would have done. Fast Food Nation presents the burger industry as a corporate machine, which invades every facet of modern life. It is powerful in that it asks a lot of embarrassing questions, but the really shocking stuff is saved for the end. Cows are killed, gutted and chopped up in this film, with blood spurting everywhere. A worker gets mangled by machinery and loses his leg, but the company aren't responsible, because he tested positive for drugs. They really don't pull any punches. It's the kind of footage I wish everyone could see.
Shock tactics don't work for everybody, and some people will find the loose, rambling nature of the narrative unsatisfying (although it is very much a growing trend with directors nowadays), but I really want this film to be a mainstream success, and hope that it is widely promoted by activists.
