Unser täglich Brot

This movie didn't show me anything I didn't already know, but it's silence gave me time to think about what is shown. Certainly not a movie for impatient people or after a hard day at work. It left me with a strong feeling: That industrial farming and breeding is just that - industrial. Certainly the slaughterhouse sequences touched me most. Treatment of the animals doesn't appear cruel, but very unnatural. Efficiency and detachment rule. Plants and animals don't grow and live anymore. They are produced and harvested. What's ultimately lost is the variety of life outside the human production-sphere and the human connection to the world.

Don't watch this movie if you have bad stomach or you won't be able to eat for a while. It shows quite a bit of shocking footage of modern food processing facilities. Dehumanization of food processing is well shown by creative camera placement. Camera placement resembles Kubrick's in some scenes - scenes of machines and people moving through corridors. Some of machines and procedures shown in the movie are really shocking. Movie doesn't have any narration, only sounds that you hear are sounds of the environment. A bit of well picked music would make this movie even better. If you want to know how the food you eat comes to your table this is the movie to watch.

It is great. Not because of the subject or because I'm so interested in the food processing industry.(I'm really not) It is great because it ask and answer some really new things about documentary.

If not new,"different" in the best possible interpretation of the word. No talking, that means no interview or voice over. No editing tricks,just perfect efficient shots, one after the other. Forget the angry guy behind the camera or the microphone who really wants to not only show but persuade you. Forget the radio-documentary, here come the images-documentary. If you liked Depardon's documentary, if you like photography, if you are tired of Mickael Moore, if you don't think you need to be told what to think when you can just see it, there is a movie for you.

Its a lot more than a documentary about food industry as far as I'm concern, its about backing up and trying to get " a bigger picture"

MAc

This might be a film aliens exploring the human food system would produce. There is no dialogue, no explanations. Everything you see is repeated ten times. There is no particular order to what you see. There is no gross animal cruelty, just a clean, clinical, efficient Germanic lack of concern for animal welfare.

The silence and monotony gives a creepy feel about even things you might not normally consider sinister, like mining fertiliser. The sheer scale made me nauseous. The flow of pig, cow and chicken carcases goes on forever without pause. The hypnotic repetition creates a horrible inevitability.

Scenes that stick out: banks of chickens like inmates "heckling" two "guards" who walk down between the rows.

A cow that knows it is about to be killed and puts up a valiant attempt to escape.

A machine for vacuuming up chickens.

A Rube Goldberg contraption for gutting fish.

A man whose job is to mount fish on a sort of hobbyhorse to prepare them for further mechanised treatment. Hour after after he performs the same little grab and twist movement.

Men picking cabbages mounting in a frame that drives them at management's rate.

African immigrants without the money to buy the vegetables they grow in a greenhouse.

Casual calm castration, debeaking, slaughter and interfering with reproduction.

We humans have a sort of compact with domestic animals. We protect them from predators, we ensure they have food, we protect their health. In return they give us milk and meat. I think we are obligated to give them lives free from cruelty, reasonably close to life in the wild. But we have reneged. We care not a whit for their well being. Everything is for human convenience. We cheated. We ripped them off.

The movie is a stunning visual documentary of modern day food production. There is no dialog - just visuals (with sound).

The video is taken from food production facilities in Europe. With the growth of the worldwide population, it is fascinating to see how streamlined (and a bit "freaky") food production has become. It's almost like watching factory assembly lines punching out one "widget" after another.

Sometimes it's disturbing to watch because the "widgets" are live animals or carcasses. These scenes made me really think about population expansion - it's very unsettling to think about how much this type of food production will have to be escalated to feed the growing masses.

If you are intrigued by mass production processes of basic vegetable and meat food supplies, this is a great film to see. It's a visual diary of the processes involved.