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Food
for Thought FAST
FOOD NATION: Directed by Richard Linklater. Written by Eric Schlosser
and Richard Linklater. Cinematography, Lee Daniel. Music, Friends of
Dean Martinez. Starring Patricia Arquette, Bobby Cannavale, Paul Dano,
Luis Guzmán, Ethan Hawke, Greg Kinnear, Kris Kristofferson, Esai
Morales, Wilmer Valderrama and Bruce Willis. Fox Searchlight, 2006.
R. 116 minutes. There's a conflict at the heart of Fast Food Nation, the new film inspired by the Eric Schlosser book, and it isn't about whether you want fries with your order. Directed by Richard Linklater, who in recent years has been moving away from the slacker-type films that made him famous — Dazed and Confused and, well, Slacker among them — Fast Food Nation wants to melt your heart while raising your blood pressure at the same time. Never the most nimble of directors, Linklater has stuffed a surefire story of corporate corruption into a larger, melodramatic narrative of Mexican immigrants working at a meat processing plant. The result is a dull compromise between a soap opera and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
In terms of defining moments — those critical early scenes when a film establishes, more or less, how it intends to reveal itself — I'd direct your attention to a pair of events very early in the film. In one sequence, a kind and handsome Mexican youth dies during an illegal border crossing (despite only spending a few hours alone, it seems). But he doesn't just die; he swoons and re-swoons, shirtless in the summer heat. In the other scene, Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear), a marketing executive at a national fast-food chain, asks why he's being sent to Colorado to inspect a supply of beef. Despite having made himself crystal clear, Don's supervisor finally spells it out: "There's shit," he says, "in the meat." Oh my, screams Don's startled face. That's why. The film follows Don to Cody, Colo., where the immigrants make a fresh start and the cows, well, don't. (Cody is a stand-in for the actual meatopia of Greeley, Colo.) In Cody we meet hard-working Raul (Wilmer Valderrama) and his illegal companions; well-meaning but undereducated Cody products Cindy (Patricia Arquette) and Pete (Ethan Hawke); Rudy (Kris Kristofferson), a somber cattleman who knows enough about the meat plant to be dangerous; and the teenagers who work at the fast-food restaurant, Amber (Ashley Johnson) and Brian (Paul Dano). Despite an ensemble cast that also includes Bruce Willis and Bobby Cannavale, Fast Food Nation merely tinkers with a moral crisis for Don, while life at the meat plant is one heartbreak after another. Fast Food Nation means well; it just doesn't always work well. To Linklater, there's a straight, unbroken line from E. coli-laced beef to the plight of illegal immigrants: The one can't survive without the other. While that may be true, there's nothing subtle or complicated about Linklater's view of the meat industrial complex. The people in power abuse power in Fast Food Nation, while the little guys are saints. Those are the rules, and they rarely get broken, which makes this endeavor less interesting than it should have been. The whole effort is infused with an us vs. them mentality that I found boring and careless. There's shit in the meat, sure. But that's not the only place you'll find it. |
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