Month: November 2006

Fast Food Nation and For Your Consideration.

Fast Food Nation, 2006. Directed by Richard Linklater, written by Linklater and Eric Schlosser. Starring Catalina Sandino Moreno, Wilmer Valderrama, Ana Claudia Talancon, Greg Kinnear, Ashley Johnson, Bobby Cannavale, Paul Dano, Esai Morales, and, in small roles: Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Luis Guzman, Avril Lavigne, Lou Taylor Pucci, and Bruce Willis.

Now showing in theaters around town.

By now you’d have to be an utter fool not to know that fast food is a truly awful substance. For years we’ve heard the warnings, seen films like Super Size Me, watched 60 Minutes, read health reports and warnings that the burgers we consume are filled with toxins, deadly fats, and perhaps even traces of shit.

Filmgoers looking for a righteous tirade against the fast food industry are going to be sorely disappointed by Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation. Never has such a cynical, pessimistic film on such a charged subject been made with less urgency. Fast Food Nation has been compared (favorably) to Fahrenheit 9/11, which is absurd–where Michael Moore sought to condemn the Bush administration for every random sneeze (and attempt to create the image of himself as a hero of the masses), Linklater’s film simply and patiently reveals the inner workings of a machine that devours people and cattle with equal indifference. And in doing so he creates a picture of surprising strength and durability.

Fast Food Nation is splintered into three distinct stories: that of a fast food executive, sent to Texas to find out why the “fecal colorform is off the charts” in the burgers (shit in the meat), and in the process discovers his soul; of a young woman trying to put her way through school while working at the local burger joint; and, most poignantly, a group of Mexican immigrants trying to keep their heads above water while working at the meat processing plant.

Greg Kinnear plays the executive, a happy-go-lucky guy whose eyes are slowly opened to the horrors that surround him. He’s the kind of a fellow who gets a real thrill over having invented the Calypso Chicken Tenders, and who laughs with his wife that lesson one in the corporate world is “don’t kill your customer”. Ashley Johnson is the young woman whose job at Mickey’s (the stand in for McDonald’s) begins to weigh on her soul. Eventually she will abandon her job to join forces with a ragtag group of campus radicals, whose work borders on the futile. Finally, Wilmer Valderrama (of That 70s Show fame), Catalina Sandino Moreno (from Maria Full of Grace), and Ana Claudia Talancon (a star in Mexico) play a family that escapes the crushing poverty of their home country to work in the states. They are a resilient bunch, happy to have the modest dough from their jobs, giving them the possibility of the American dream–pizza for dinner, a new truck in the driveway. While their paths never cross, these characters’ struggles encapsulate our own desperate attempts to find meaning in our jobs, and in our attempts to make the world a better place.

There is a real mystery in Fast Food Nation, and the real story isn’t simply that fast food is garbage and the people are crushed who work in its production. No, the real story is how do we exist in a world that crushes the soul, and whose systems–in this case, food-production (though it could be about the auto industry, banking, government) have grown to an unmanageable size. Fast Food Nation poses an existentialist dilemma that pundits like Moore and Spurlock would never touch: Linklater understands that there are no enemies in human form, just people stuck in situations beyond their control. As usual, Linklater allows his characters the freedom to express themselves through conversation: like Slacker, Waking Life, Before Sunrise, Fast Food Nation celebrates its people, giving even Bruce Willis’ corporate hack his due, and his dignity. In my interview with Linklater, he stated that his goal was honesty–if you make one man the personification of evil, you are, as Linklater said, “giving that one guy a lot of power he doesn’t really have.” This suggests that we’re all culpable, which is, in reality, more terrifying than the killing floor of the slaughterhouse.

The movie boasts some wonderful performances (as usual with Linklater, who deserves the title “actor’s director” more than Altman ever did), and it saves its gore for the end, and even then it’s subdued. My guess is that Fast Food Nation is bound to be unpopular, and will please few people. Those who want to ignore the fast food crisis would never see it, while those who have Eric Schlosser’s book highlighted in a hundred spots will feel the film has softened its considerable message. But Linklater has taken a page from the great paranoid classics of the 70s, films that assumed we had brains and sought to make our world a better place. Watching Fast Food Nation, the impetus is on us, not necessarily to topple the great machine, but rather, to live without the machine. Then, and only then, will its gears slow, stop, and finally release us from its grip.

…

For Your Consideration, 2006. Directed by Christopher Guest, written by Guest and Eugene Levy. Starring Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Harry Shearer, Christopher Moynihan, Christopher Guest, John Michael Higgins, Carrie Aizley, Ed Begley Jr., Whitney Taylor Brown, Michael McKean, the great Jane Lynch, Fred Willard, Eugene Levy, and Michael Hitchcock and Don Lake as a great Ebert/Siskel pair, and Office creator Ricky Gervais.

Now showing in theaters around town.

Who would have thought that when Spinal Tap hit our screens over twenty years ago, that it would spawn a whole new genre? In fact, the mockumentary may have reached its zenith, with The Office pulling in audiences, to Tap’s Nigel Tufnel rocking out for VW (usually during the show). Christopher Guest has made a series of these films, utilizing a tight-knit crew so professional they can improvise most of the dialogue and make it seem both hilarious and painfully real.

For Your Consideration breaks slightly with this trend. While it employs the verite camera style, it is not a mockumentary, eschewing for once the onscreen interviews. It is the story of the making of a straight-to-video clunker called Home For Purim, and what happens to its idiotic crew when rumors abound that it will garner some Oscar nominations. Home For Purim is unbelievably bad, its actors kind-hearted but daft, and the movie is filled with more achingly funny moments than we’ve seen in a Christopher Guest film in ages. Then again, Hollywood is an easy target, and while For Your Consideration certainly stands as one of the better comedies of the year (if not the most hilarious, but it’s been a weak year), it could use more vitriol–or it could be more sweet. When Catherine O’Hara’s character finally flips out, it’s more depressing than funny, for we’ve come to know her as a kind lady, not some hag who needs her face carved into by a plastic surgeon. And when Home For Purim really does garner a nod or two, one can’t help but recoil–no film this bad would ever get even a trickle of consideration. And there have been lots of horrible Oscar nominees.

Nonetheless, For Your Consideration is a welcome night at the movies, an evening of almost guaranteed belly laughs and repeated moments after the show. See it for its joy in celebrating comedians of all feathers, working with a decent script, playing off one another, for the sheer fun of it. Sometimes, that’s all we need.