Alice Waters was riding in the backseat of a Tesla, breathlessly describing some purchases she had just made at the Telluride Farmers Market—“glorious tomatoes, last of the peaches, herbs, basil, mesclun salad, beautiful melons, flowers.” Whether it was the altitude of the Colorado mountain town or the exquisiteness of the harvest that accelerated her respiration was unclear. But the chef and restaurateur’s mission on this particular day at the Telluride Film Festival last September was to encourage people to see a movie at the fest that would make any viewer consider her next meal with care, Eating Animals.
A documentary adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2009 book of the same name, Eating Animals makes a compelling case against factory farming, in visits to both small, humane family farms, and devastatingly cruel mass-agriculture environments. “I liked that somebody was making it real, the big issue of collusion between huge corporations and the government,” Waters said, explaining why she was championing the documentary, which opens in New York on Friday and in Los Angeles next week. “We need to think about this in a very different way. We’re in the food underground, and we have to connect with each other. We have to help people become informed about the poisoning of our food system and the ownership by a small number of national food corporations.”
Eating Animals is narrated and produced by Natalie Portman, who read Foer’s book before it was published, saw in it the potential for cinematic treatment, and brought aboard director Christopher Quinn. “We would talk about, what is the tone that will make this very difficult subject approachable?” said Foer, also a producer on the documentary. “Because people are so disinclined to approach it, to willingly say, ‘I’m going to upset myself for 90 minutes. You’re gonna tell me this thing I love, it’s probably not good for me or anybody else.’”
Vegans may appreciate the anti-animal-cruelty themes of the movie, but the tone the filmmakers sought to strike was one of openness to different viewpoints: Portman is vegan, Foer describes himself as eating “as little meat as possible, which for me happens to be zero,” and Quinn eats meat. Waters, aboard as a booster of the film, also eats meat, but only from select sources. “I’m a little bit with Wendell Berry, and many environmentalists and farmers that I know that would like to have animals as part of the big picture of farming, and I believe in that,” Waters said.
Instead of emphasizing divisions, the filmmakers focused their documentary on the unsung heroes of livestock, people like Frank Reese, a fourth-generation farmer who raises heritage poultry with an emphasis on animal welfare and environmental stewardship, and veterinarian James Keen, a whistleblower who told The New York Times about animal mistreatment at a government laboratory. Reese, a figure in Foer’s book, comes to life in a different, richer way in the film, the writer believes. “You can’t stay on Frank, you can’t stay on his face in a book, you know?” Foer said. “I wrote about him a lot, but all of the writing doesn’t convey what it does just staying on his face for a few seconds.”
Ultimately, the makers of Eating Animals are trying a softer sell for a simple idea, to get their audience to consider their next meals with care.
“If you were to walk down the street and say, ‘Do you think it’s right to torture animals?’ Every single person would say, ‘No,’” Foer said. “‘Do you think it’s right to destroy the environment?’ Every single person would say, ‘No.’ So then the question is, how do you make that consensus apparent instead of making the divisiveness apparent? Historically, people who are interested in these issues have made the divisiveness apparent. And so it’s kind of like me-against-them. You know, if I see an animal-rights group on the street, I’ll just turn around because I don’t want to have to deal with it. . . . It’s just counterproductive to be holier than thou.”