Customer Reviews

Our Daily Bread

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found this a highly unusual and visually fascinating documentary about primary food production, both animal and vegetable. The lack of any sort of commentary initially annoyed me because so much of what is shown raises the question: what's going on here but after a while I found I was settling down to the rhythm of the editing. The way director Geyrhalter places the camera and then just lets it roll will grow on you. Even where there is some fast machinery the shot is invariably a static one of the equipment.

The documentary looks at fruit and vegetable production and collection, animal husbandry of chickens, cows, pigs and nicely I thought, fish farming plus a visit to a salt mine. The most eye opening thing to me was the amount of mechanization involved in food production though it seemed that the equipment had been designed to work most efficiently when the fruit, animals or fish were standard sizes. Despite the huge investment in equipment on these European farms (or plants) it was still cost effective to employ shift-workers.

There are some quirky scenes: several of workers having a break, eating or having a cigarette (these were just long static shots looking at the person); spraying everything in a slaughter house with some sort of foam (a detergent maybe) digging small holes in mounts on a field and either planting or collecting something. I would have thought an occasional black strip across the bottom of the screen with a white caption would not have hurt the integrity of the movie and helped the viewer.

Despite what others might say I found nothing shocking in the movie. This usually refers to animal slaughter but it is done in a simple straightforward way with machinery doing most of the work and rather intriguingly everything shown involving animals is done at a reasonable speed in these factories.

The movie concentrates on primary food production and not the industrial creation of processed food...maybe that's Geyrhalter's next assignment. Overall a very impressive and visually remarkable look at the subject and one of those documentaries that is certainly worth seeing more than once.

Just like the previous review, I am shocked to find that there is only one review for this incredible film. The fact that there is no voice over makes this film that much more powerful. One of the most significant films I watched this year. Watch this film- it will be 1.5hrs you spent meaningfully. It opened my eyes. I am deeply grateful to the filmmakers.

I was shocked when I looked up this movie and didn't see any reviews. I saw this last year and was just mesmerized as I watched it. In many places, it is silent and yet the images it creates are powerful and perplexing. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone, it makes a great companion to Schlosser's Fast Food Nation or SuperSize Me.

This is a beautiful and profoundly disturbing documentary. That it manages to be both at the same time is a paradox. I'll explain a bit more how.

Like the movie Manufactured Landscapes by Edward Burtynsky, "Our Daily Bread" takes a look at aspects of our world that are not always readily accessible or known to most citizens of western countries. With a steady decline of agricultural and industrial workers over the years, most of us have little idea of what it takes to produce what we consume. This is certainly true for our food, the topic of this movie. Again, like Manufactured Landscapes, this documentary is "only" a sequence of very well composed and lit shots, without interviews or voice over. This may disturb or annoy some. I find this to be an extremely effective approach, as it makes one confront more directly ones own feelings and in the end gives more impact to the images.

While the author certainly has an agenda, I don't think it's an extremist one. He does not try to denounce the difficulty of working in the meatpacking industry or attempt to portray what is happening to the animals that will be processed as particularly horrible. His aesthetics are cold and distant, even maybe "scientist". Everyone will need to make up one's mind. But the way he frames most of his shots using highly symmetrical or geometrical compositions certainly contributes to the creation of a eery feeling of "elsewhere". That's the artistic and thematic bias of the movie: to show us that what lands on our plates comes from places we don't know about and don't think about.

One important point to note is that we typically don't get to see the end processing of the food products. Most of the steps shown are very much upstream in the food processing chain: animals are slaughtered and cut into pieces, but you don't see how they're turned into hamburgers or ready made meals. Only a few salads are packaged into plastic bags the way you will see them in supermarkets. This is very much in line with my observation above that the author is interested mostly in the less familiar. But be forewarned that while this is not a documentary about "the crap that we eat", certain images are extremely powerful and may stay with you a long time. Having watched Baraka I had already seen little chicks on conveyor belts, but this is nothing compared to the efficient violence with which bigs are cut in two and eviscerated, or full frontal cow slaughtering. The movie ends with the meat packing plant being cleaned up. It may not be so easy for you to forget what you saw. This might even be a good thing.

I immediately thought of the documentary BARAKA after seeing the visual style of this film. BARAKA is also a montage of scenes (Set to appropriate music though) without commentary / voiceovers. It addresses some of the same themes as in this film, but from a wider angle.

While I've seen other documentaries such as - EARTHLINGS - about the way we process our FOOD (DRUGs) none have been as complete as this one. Some of the scenes were a bit shocking - in the sheer scale of the systems we have created and "awesome mechanization" even to just pick lettuce. Although granted - mechanization may be higher in overly logical Germany. Although, I know the scenes shown apply to many many countries. I say this after having visited a fair number of places related to the curtain behind the consumer facade -- such as STOCKYARD CITY in Oklahama City, USA - #1 auction site for cattle in the world and huge copper mines and strip coal mines.

I will remember the salt mine underground, and the assembly lines of pigs, chickens, cows, the suiting up scenes to apply pesticides / herbicides, and well...the whole thing!

In the talk of JOBs, economy, efficiency, productivity, we have lost sight of ourselves.

I'm ready to just drink water. Did you know - when we are born we are 80%+ water. The average adult is 60-70%.
We are ALL living in a state of dehydration! The whole process sickens me to the core. The devil is us. The "matrix" we have created with our own bare hands. The system we have created with our own IGNORANCE. PLEASANTVILLE is a movie I recommend too. Most won't watch this documentary - for they fear the truth - the truth about the monsters we have become.

Have you ever wondered how chickens are "being produced", as if they were "animal machines" ? Or how cows are being milked today ? Or what kind of outfit people have to wear when they spray our tomatoes with those "harmless" - if we may believe the FDA - pesticides ?

Nikolaus Geyrhalter comments on his film : "I wanted to collect and make accessible images from this branch, this world in as objective a manner as possible. What makes it fascinating are the machines and the sense of what's doable, the human spirit of invention and organization, even at close quarters with horror and insensitivity. Plants and animals are treated just like any other goods, and smooth functioning is extremely important. The most important thing is how the animals can be born, raised and held as efficiently and inexpensively as possible, how to treat them so they're as fresh and undamaged as possible when they arrive at the slaughterhouse, and that the levels of medications and stress hormones in the meat are below the legal limits. No one thinks about whether they're happy."

Watch this DVD and be amazed, or horrified ! There are no interviews, no music either. You are left alone with your thoughts.

If you like what you see, the smooth functioning of the machines and the lack of happiness of our "animal machines", continue to enjoy your hamburger at McDonald's.

If you don't like it, think of how farming was done less than a century before. Farmer John Peterson says : "It used to be that everyone in this country had a connection to farms, but now most of these farms have gone". I think we should reestablish this connection. Peterson also uses a certain level of mechanization, but it doesn't go berserk. Watch his DVD to see another form of farming, very different to what you will see in this documentary : The Real Dirt on Farmer John. Peterson's farm, Angelic Organics, has 1200 shareholders from a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme. Each shareholder receives each week a box full of fresh and healthy vegetables and fruits. This way, the farm performs its historical role again, reuniting the people with the source of the food.

I still eat all the same food. But now, I know. I can't stop knowing. There isn't anything I don't know. Thanks to this film, I cannot be ignorant of what I am putting into my mouth. The magical mystery that makes my food a nice little geometric shape for me to enjoy is gone. I know. And this film is responsible for that. Be warned. You don't want to know.

I had seen this documentary in our International Film Festival a couple of years ago and had found it a point for discussion and much thinking. In this day and age I think it important to consider where our food comes from. NZ is not quite so 'industrialised' in the food area (yet?!) but it reminded me to consider our local food and vegie market and growing our own vegies etc. I consider it important for anyone who cares about food and recommend it highly. Almost a totally visual message...no dialogue to direct you-you make up your own mind.

Our Daily Bread, directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter, is a highly informational and unique documentary about food production in Europe. The hour and 32 minutes of the film showed European laborers slaughtering and dis-assembling cows and pigs, feeding chickens, collecting chicken carcasses, herding pigs, sorting chicks, cutting and bagging lettuce, using planes to water fields of flowers, feeding and catching fish in fish farms, working in salt mines, and picking tomatoes. Occassionally, there was a short scene of a worker eating a sandwhich or smoking a cigarette while on break. Although there is no narrator describing the events of the movie, musing upon the happiness of the animals, analyzing the sanitation of the factory, or discussing the background of the workers, there is still much to learn based on observations alone. I was struck by the singular portrayal of events that are fairly early in the process of industrial food production. I thought it odd that this film did not show any processes between the first steps of production and eating, such as packaging products, grinding meat, cleaning produce before wrapping, etc. Perhaps Geyrhalter skipped such events so as to inspire viewers to consider, while grocery shopping and eating, that their food was once alive, and that gruesome death had to occur for their food to reach the table. I think he wished viewers to consider, before indulging in a meal, fatigued laborers sawing through countless pig carcasses, the trembling of cows as they shied away from their approaching murder, and the splatter of blood on the white floors of slaughtering factories. Perhaps this consideration would not cause viewers to change their eating habits, but simply to exercise awareness.

I think a very essential idea in this film was treatment of animals and plants as commodities. This treatment is evidenced in the efficient and methodical movements of the workers. Nearly every worker shown on screen was alert, and completed one simple task, such as cutting a pig carcass in half, picking tomatoes, feeding chickens, checking for dead chickens, and birthing calves, to name a few. Industrial food production is clearly a form of business, because training workers to do the same task over and over makes the cost of production lower, thereby enabling the most profit possible. I also thought that industrial food production in Europe is primarily a business, and food a commodity, after seeing workers casually tossing chicks and killing cows as if they were simply knitting a stitch in a scarf. I didn't expect the workers to coddle the animals or carefully plant each seed by hand, but I was challenged by the fact that the animals were not entitled to something as small as pain-relieving drugs before slaughter, or even a flinch on the slaughterer's face in the midst of painful squeals. I'm not sure what the figurative scarf of Europe's foodways advocates, but it seems not to advocate respect, equality, happiness, or rights.

An aspect of Our Daily Bread that I found particularly challenging was the need for distasteful jobs to be done in order to feed a country. Working in facilities portrayed in Our Daily Bread appears to be an extremely thankless and joyless job. It requires very little intellect, a constant state of alertness, and a degree of numbness to the importance of life or the pain of others. If someone enjoys mental challenges, gets tired of concentrating after long periods of time, dislikes seeing blood and death, and cannot help but have empathy toward others, then working for industrial food production corporations is not for them. The laborers in the film were probably not there because they wanted to be...will they be thanked? Probably not. It bothers me that the duty of a laborer in food production (which is necessary without drastically changing the economy or population) cannot be more dynamic, humane, respectful to the feelings and intelligence of all organisms, and joyful.

Well worth watching.

The absence of narrative is quite useful, although the images are enough to form an opinion about what is seen. In any case, this approach was quite interesting and useful.

Overall a worthy documentary!