Supersized Ambitions: Fast Food Nation
Eric Schlosser is quick to point out that 2006 represents an important, but mostly overlooked, centennial. In his first opportunity to speak following the D.C. premiere of the movie based on his book, Fast Food Nation, Schlosser reminds the audience that it was in 1906 that Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, the classic muckraker that exposed the horrific practices of the meatpacking industry and helped prompt a major overhaul in the way they conducted their business. Schlosser evokes Sinclair to point out both the bleak and the hopeful: that after those reforms, the industry has been slowly backsliding under the collective radar, but that by raising awareness of the problem, the seeds of change can be planted. And with the release of the filmed version of his own industry exposé, Schlosser and his co-conspirator, director and co-screenwriter Richard Linklater, hope to do just that.
Schlosser and Linklater have accomplished something remarkable with Fast Food Nation, distilling a non-fiction book about the influence of fast food on the global cultural landscape into a narrative film that manages to touch on most of the many points and populaces covered in the book. Less fortunately, they’ve done so by making a film that will end up alienating much of the audience not already part of the choir and, judging from some early reviews, some of those already seated in the pews, as well.
Upon the release of his book, Schlosser says he received a landslide of interest in a movie version of the book. Most were from filmmakers interested in doing the expected: a straight documentary treatment. But in a pre-Bowling for Columbine world, where documentaries could not expect to make any money and depended heavily on corporate backing, the author worried about his bleak assertions being softened by those putting up the money. In developing the book into a narrative, fictionalized version, Linklater has made his most daring film since his cult debut, Slacker. The new film is bound to prompt comparisons to the earlier one, with its multiple, loosely related storylines, but it’s a lazy analogy. Slacker’s stories led one into another; in Nation, the threads of the plot (and there are many) jump back and forth between each other, tied together only in the loosest of ways.
Despite the naysayers (and there will be plenty), Nation succeeds for the same reason Linklater’s other 2006 release, A Scanner Darkly, did: through a stubborn refusal to act like a conventional movie. The multiple storyline approach is the only effective way to fictionalize Schlosser’s book, but will be tough for many audiences to digest. Characters appear and disappear with little warning, and few, if any, plotlines resolve.
For instance, there is Greg Kinnear’s fast food marketing executive, who acts as the audience stand-in for the first half of the film, traveling to Colorado to research the origin of the meat his company uses. We see much of the early part of the film through his eyes, but he suddenly disappears midway through only to reappear during the closing credits. Other actors float in for one-scene cameos that probably could have been expanded into entirely new films, but are gone without further development. Amid all this, the emotional center of the film is forced to rest on the one story that carries from beginning to end, one that takes place almost entirely in a foreign language, with Wilmer Valderrama of “That 70’s Show” turning in a remarkable performance as an illegal immigrant working at a meat packing plant.
If all this sounds like a pointless mess, you’re only half right. It is a mess, but so is the cultural climate created by the fast food industry. The film reflects the layers of the problem in the only way it can, by showing each of them, one on top of another. Each character completes a piece of the complex puzzle, whether it’s the marketing executive, the immigrant, the teen from the lower-middle class household trying to afford car insurance and a way out of a dead-end town, the rancher losing his land and his livelihood, or the supplier bargaining deals between the meat packers and the restaurants. In these last two characters, Kris Kristofferson and Bruce Willis, respectively, bring amazing presence to the barest of roles. Kristofferson’s weathered face seems that of a man fading away as surely as the ranch he futilely tends to. Willis blithely offers the no-nonsense advice that all you have to do is cook the meat if it’s contaminated with feces, as he takes a scene-chewing bite of a burger he fully admits “probably has shit in it."
Schlosser warns that Fast Food Nation is a dark movie for dark times. Those still left in the audience after documentary-style scenes from the slaugherhouse’s kill floor will leave deeply depressed. But it is sure to leave them deeply affected as well. Linklater ultimately hopes that the ray of light in the movie is in the notion that audiences will leave more educated and motivated to vote for change via consumer choice. The movie has that kind of power, but whether it can reach a large audience is another matter entirely.
Fast Food Nation opens with a limited release on November 17, 2006.