Food Beware – The French Organic Revolution (aka That Should Not Be/2009/First Run DVD)

                                              

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Main Program: B

 

 

As we continue to reevaluate why there are so many health crisis and connect them to environment and eating, Food Beware (2009) focuses on just the troubles in France and how a country especially known for food has leaped forward in both organic food production and wanting to criticize the problem.  As one man says, it is just the political will that is not there, or is it greedy unchecked, unregulated companies that don’t care?

 

Either way, the 112 minutes is loaded with very disturbing facts, issues and enough information that what is going on with our environment, food and loss of all kinds of life in the ecosystem should be treated as a crisis (instead of a joke by rogue corporations, et al) is the most disturbing thing of all.  Sad too that a conference related to the U.N. is the source of some of the most damning evidence.  A companion to Food, Inc and Fast Food Nation (both reviewed elsewhere on this site), Food Beware shows how backwards the world has gone since the 1980s in preserving itself and its life.  After all, there is no excuse for the next generation to be the first to be born less healthy than the previous one.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is soft throughout with motion blur and detail issues, while the Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is not bad, though the dramatic chords played every time a dark statistic is shown gets to be a bit much.  Gabriel Yared did the score, but was this his idea?  There are no extras.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo