The End of The Year is always packed with film for me. Free time and good films go so well together. In the past few days I have seen Sherlock Holmes and Invictus, which I thought were both excellent Hollywood efforts. I particularly enjoyed the story of Nelson Mandela and the South African Rugby Team’s triumph in the 1995 World Cup. I love a good sports story and this one occurred at a very important time in the struggle for equality, just after the fall of Apartheid. Sports can be a powerful bond and they create community, providing a single focus for so many different people. Enemies in one context are friends in another.
I also watched two un-Hollywood movies about food production and consumption that have opened my eyes to some invisible realities. Food, Inc. and King Corn both dissect the industry and its players. While Food, Inc. focuses on the negative, unintended consequences of our changing food habits, King Corn specifically examines the telescopic domain of our nation’s corn crop, which we consume on a much larger scale than we are generally aware of. It is a versatile plant that has many uses and it finds its way into our food chain on many sneaky levels. Both movies feature Michael Pollan and his careful explanations of the roots of a obesity epidemic, and King Corn features a local Brooklyn cab driver discussing his family’s battle with diabetes, while driving around a few blocks from my apartment! Not too shocking considering the filmmakers, one of whom is a fellow Milton Academy graduate, live in the neighborhood… Way to really drive it home, film!
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