19 7 / 2010
Movie of the Day: King Corn
King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat-and how we farm (via imdb)
King Corn (2009)
The story of two brothers finding out what it is to be a modern corn farmers. Free the from the pitfalls of other info-propaganda-mentaries, King Corn succeeds where films like No Impact Man fail. By telling a personal story alongside an economic and political one, the brother create an engaging and intimate look at the challenges contemporary farmers face.
It’s a wonderfully different films than other films in its genre. Gone are loud infographics, cheeky voiceovers and talking heads. They’re replaced with the occasional stop-motion animation, a lovely touch, that is used to convey large numerical data in lieu of a spreadsheet. The movie lacks the fear-mongering tactics of film like Food Inc. and Super Size Me.
The tactics of those films, archival footage and on-screen testimonies of experts has power and strength, but tend to wear thin when it’s loud booming voice drowns itself out.
Personally, I’m hip to the politics in films like this. I think that the food we eat is slowly killing us and the planet, and without changes to the patterns of our lives, we will kill everything on this planet, including ourselves. I find that most people who watch these kinds of films feel this way too. People seem to have made their decisions before ever watching a film like this. So, if you’re on the same page as something, why would you want to be yelled at?
It’s an interesting turn in the history of propaganda filmmaking; a cinema of rhetoric. One that King Corn avoids with a deft grace. Often it feels that the filmmakers are sharing something deeply personal. They’re quiet, curious voices move us through the film. They’re somber tones are welcome change and carry a much more persuasive element than its genre contemporaries.
