>>FEATURE
FAST FOOD NATION
STARRING: Greg Kinnear, Catalina Sandino Moreno and Ethan Hawke
DIRECTED BY: Richard Linklater
Now playing
Uptown Screen
Some movies are defined by the catchphrases they spawn. Think of The Godfather’s "I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse," Network’s "I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it any more" or Jaws’ "You’re gonna need a bigger boat." To this lexicon, Fast Food Nation adds this (mc)nugget: "There is shit in the meat."
It’s not a statement any omnivore wants to dwell on. But Richard Linklater’s screen adaptation of Eric Schlosser’s non-fiction bestseller Fast Food Nation is not intended to reassure viewers. Linklater and Schlosser (who co-wrote the script with the director) would prefer to make audiences confront unsettling truths about a system that tolerates a certain amount of fecal contamination much as it tolerates the trampling of workers’ rights, the environmental toll of industrial farming and the various health and ethical ramifications for animals and humans alike. Like it or not, the patty is the political.
Yet much like the book that is its basis, Linklater’s film does not play as a polemic – instead, the movie mixes drama, comedy and agitprop with sometimes ungainly, but largely effective results. Real-life figures in Schlosser’s book are visible in the film’s fictional characters, who inhabit the same Colorado town but are otherwise separated by vast socio-economic differences. Together they comprise a wide spectrum of perspectives and experiences within the fast-food industry.
Though it might seem unusual for a feature to transform a non-fiction work in this fashion, Linklater explains that it seemed like a natural extension.
"Everyone asked me, ‘Why do this as fiction?’" says the 46-year-old Texan director much loved for such films as Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise and this summer’s A Scanner Darkly. "But the book is the documentary. It’s to Eric’s credit that he was like, ‘Nah, let’s throw out the book and get to the lives of the people behind this world. Whatever issues, whatever information, they’ll sort of be felt underneath it all. Let’s just depict life.’ Because that’s what life is like – you don’t realize you’re in an issue. We’re living non-fiction but it feels pretty removed from facts and figures."
Equally unusual is the film’s focus on the challenges and compromises faced by working people. Don (Greg Kinnear) is a marketing exec for a McDonald’s-like burger chain who wants to know why his company’s meat can’t be cleaner. As the nice white guy, Don initially seems to be the person with whom the audience is meant to identify. For the first hour, Fast Food Nation is dominated by his enlightening encounters with figures like Willis’s straight-talking cattle-biz exec and an ornery rancher played by Kris Kristofferson.
Yet halfway through, the emphasis abruptly shifts onto two young women who occupy far lower positions in the pecking order than Don does – Amber (Ashley Johnson), a perky burger-joint employee who is politicized by what she learns about the industry and Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno), an illegal Mexican worker who endures the worst America offers its huddled masses when she ends up with a job in a slaughterhouse.
"If you came from another planet and saw what Hollywood produces every year, you would think that everybody in the United States is a lawyer, a doctor, a cop or a Hollywood agent," says Schlosser in a phone interview from Seattle last week. "One of the most radical things that Rick did was make a film about poor people who speak in their own language – that, you never see. The poor are just not present in American films and there are a lot of them."
Though these characters often occupy the same physical space in Fast Food Nation – which also features memorable turns by Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Wilmer Valderrama and a plucky Avril Lavigne — it’s nearly impossible for them to acknowledge each other’s place in the system to which they all belong.
"That’s the whole force of this business model in the world we’re living in," says Linklater. "We all feel this disconnect from the sources of our products. You’re really made not to think about it too much. And if you do, you’re not supposed to care about other people. The metaphor is that we’re all each other’s cattle – we take our turns. Even if you’re not led to slaughter, you’re still expendable and used by other people. We are encouraged to think about people as that, as functions within the system. The last thing they want you to do is to care enough to change anything."
Thus the film’s most provocative act of subversion – the disappearance of the character we’re led to expect will engineer that change. To placate people who were worried that Don’s surprising exit would alienate viewers, Linklater pointed to Psycho as an example the strategy could work. "Thank God Hitchcock did it once at least," jokes the director.
And as Schlosser says, what happens to Don also reflects the reality that "very nice people become complicit in things that aren’t nice. The problem is not that there are three really evil guys we have to get rid of. This is about how the system rewards and encourages obedience."
The starkest view of that system is presented in the final scenes, shot in a meat-packing plant. Needless to say, this may be the least appetizing thing you see in a movie this year (except for possibly the Steve-o fart-mask scene in Jackass Number Two). Yet Linklater, himself a vegetarian, is pleased that most people do not feel the scenes are "gratuitous or pornographic."
"The narrative sort of demands it," he explains. "Perversely, we are led to that. It’s good to see the full revelation of what’s behind it all because there is that point you have to confront it. When people tell me it’s very shocking footage, I think, ‘Is it?’ It’s like there’s a war going on and you read in the paper about tens of thousands of civilians killed, but then you see a picture and go, ‘Oh my god!’ It’s like, ‘Well, of course. War is a real thing – what did you think was happening?’ So where do you think your meat comes from?"
All this might make the movie sound unremittingly disturbing and disheartening, but it’s not. Fast Food Nation celebrates the strength and vitality that many of these characters display in the face of adversity. It also celebrates Amber’s idealism, which might seem a little silly when she leads an expedition to free some cattle but could yield some good.
"I guess it’s up to everybody to incorporate these images and information in your world and deal with it however works for you," says Linklater. "But disclosure of information is a good thing. If all governments and businesses would at least put on the table the full ramifications of their policies or what they’re doing, then you can have a discussion – people can make informed choices."
If you’d rather not confront the questions the film raises, you can at least take solace in another of Willis’s sage pronouncements. "It’s a sad truth of life," he says, "but we all have to eat some shit from time to time." |
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