Fleisch

"Meat" changed my life. After viewing it once, I tried to eat meat once again. I got sick and after that, have remained a vegetarian for the past 29 years. The power of the images - without narrative interpretation - is worth a study in itself of the effect of cinema as a language.

This documentary accomplishes something that seems foreign to modern filmmakers - the objective point of view. While every frame is a choice and thus filled with implications, this filmmaker takes no opportunity to poeticize or dramatize a message not already contained in the objective representation.

It is a poignant representation of man's ability to desensitize himself to the plight of coexisting animals on this planet.

But then again, that is only my subjective feeling from the images which themselves do nothing but reflect an objective truth.

You ever want to look at something that scares you? Like (for me) a big spider weaving its web outside the garage? You can step back away, watch from a safe distance, not have the image filling your view. Or sometimes you can just peak at something, maybe between fingers, one eye shut? This film lets you see how meat is really made. If you went to a slaughterhouse and walked around, had a tour, it would be a completely horrifying sensory overload. But here, on your TV screen, and in B&W, it seems somewhat safer to look. Close your eyes and it will be gone, you are safe.

There is no narration, just the sounds of the plant as the workers do their jobs, the machinery clanks away. Very sterile feeling. (Nothing like Motel Hell). Very simply, each line at the plant, from rounding up each type of critter, killing it, and processing it.

Again, this may sound overwhelming -- but it isn't. The B&W, the natural sound, the slow even pace, it seems more like an automobile assembly line after a while.

So, if you are fine with not knowing, perhaps even not imaging what goes on in a slaughterhouse then you are all set. But if you are curious -- just what goes on behind those doors -- this film will tell you in as gentle but honest a way possible.

My high school class was required to watch Meat in the 1970s. It isn't just a brilliant documentary about the brutal world of a slaughterhouse and how fast a living animal is turned into chops of meat. It is a revelation, requiring you to think about how removed we are from the food we eat, unless we are farmers. For years after watching Meat, I could not say enough about how important I thought this film was. It doesn't directly posit this question, but you will think it nonetheless when you watch Meat: What if we suddenly had to get our food, without grocers, crop pickers, and yes, slaughterhouses?

Saw this on PBS a long time ago. This B&W film is very long and tough to look at. If life in all of its grittiness is what interests you, this slice of it will be worth seeing. If you are the type of person who wants to know something as basic as how the food you eat is processed for you, and if you are not the squeamish type who blanches at the sight of blood, even if in B&W, than you will find this a truly interesting and informing film. Starting at the farm/ranch in the darkness of early morning where the cattle are loaded onto trucks, and ending at the completion of the workday at the slaughter house, it carries the viewer through all phases of the production process. Yes, it isn't pretty, but it is real, very real. The use of a Judas goat to lead the cattle up the ramp to the chute where they are quickly dispatched with a stun gun to their foreheads is a never to be forgotten piece of film work.

Saw this documentary once in the late seventies when it aired on PBS and, considering the subject matter, the Meat Packers lobbying group probably went ballistic and has prevented it from ever being shown to the public again.

It's pretty scary and after seeing how cattle and sheep are processed for human consumption. After I saw it I stopped eating any red meat product. Thankfully, it was shot in black and white (the only 'color' you would have seen would be red from all of the blood) and follows the cattle from the pens where they are milling about and then get directed to the slaughter house. They are then 'humanly' dispatched by knocking them out with an electric shock. Probably to prevent the adrenaline from pumping into their system which acts as a 'poison' spoiling the meat for consumption.

They camera then follows the carcass thru the whole meat packing process showing the meat packers standing knee deep in blood as it drains from the carcases that are hooked by their hooves on the assembly line and then sawed up for their particular 'cuts' of meat. There's no narrative or music. Just the raw video view of what happens to cattle when they are prepared for human consumption. The camera really does everything necessary to show the process of delivery of the less glorified image of your basic hamburger, t-bone steak, rump-roast, etc.

I don't know how most people feel about what they put in their bodies but after seeing this documentary you will swear off of any meat that's 'red'. Medically, red meat, with the nitrates and nitrites included to 'preserve' the meat on the shelf longer, can cause all sorts of cancer causing maladies to your intestinal tract and colon. Stick with chicken or fish for the time being but those two groups are inching their way to being unfit for human consumption also.