Meat

This is an amazing motion picture which tracks the production of meat, starting with livestock, and ending with the clear-wrapped steaks we find in our markets.

A stark, straight forward black and white account of how animals become food. Brutally honest and unflinching, this film is not for the faint of heart. It pulls no punches - but simply and graphically traces the process of stunning, slaughter, disembowelment, dismemberment, and butchering of animals. There is no narrative. Just an impassive, no-frills recording of the process by the eye of the camera.

You will probably have a hard time going back to a plate of meat too soon after viewing this film. But it's a worthwhile examination of food processing that gives you a sense of the reality behind that steak.

"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.

The beautiful thing about Wiseman's documentaries, are that he doesn't have to say anything at all...because he lets the images speak for themselves.

And in the case of Meat, things are no different.

Here, he confronts the industrialized feedlots and factory farms, in midwestern USA.

We watch the entire process from the auction house (where these large scale operations buy animals off of the smaller scale farmers who raise them); to packaging; rounding out with the goods being shipped off to market.

With a little business in between.

It is, however, a bit of a selective endeavour...as we only watch the process as it applies to cattle and sheep.

Pigs and chickens are not covered here.

After leaving the auction house, we head to the feedlots, where the cattle are fattened up on grain.

The industry leaders, here, are educating a group of Japanese businessmen, who want to take what they learn, so they can start up a similar such operation back at home.

From here, we head straight into the slaughterhouse.

Where the cattle are put through a very fined tuned- and highly efficient- operation, that sees them stunned, slit open, gutted, deskinned, and left to hang for marbling purposes.

Then we switch over to watch sheep go through a similar such process...as they are led to the slaughter by the "scapegoat".

A turncoat of an animal, that leads the recently sheered flock straight toward their impending doom.

The stunning part of the process is the most disturbing...as the animals are strung up, and hung from their limbs, as they continue to twitch, after being subject to an intense electrical shock, applied to the brain.

Though, the remaining part certainly isn't for the faint of heart.

As it makes you understand why people like Ed Gein were such affective serial killers.

Because working in this industry is sure to desensitize you from the blood and guts involved in the act of dismemberment.

Wiseman might seem like a fly on the wall.

A neutral actor in the whole ordeal, not imposing his voice, or opinion upon the viewer.

But the film certainly comes off as a critique, in this vegan's (admittedly bias) opinion.

On one hand, it is a valuable look at what these animals- and those engaged in the act of slaughtering them- must endure, to bring meat to your kitchen table each night.

Thus acting to bridge the disconnect that your average urban dwellers have, between what they eat, and where it comes from.

But at the same time, can be seen as a critique of the heartless, emotionless, process that is the industrialized slaughter of animals for meat, and related such products.

Because it certainly is easy to see how such a world could breed sociopaths, and serial killers of the future.

As, lest we forget...meat will always require murder.

His films having such dichotomies, are why Wiseman is- and always will be- such an important documentarian.

8 out of 10.

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?