Our Daily
Bread
by Nikolaus
Geyrhalter
First Run/Icarus Films, Brooklyn, New
York, 2006
Video-DVD, 92 mins., col.
Sales, video-DVD: $440; rental, video:
$150
Distributors website: http://www.frif.com
Reviewed by Martha Blassnigg
University of Plymouth
martha.blassnigg@gmail.com
The documentary film Our Daily Bread,
by Nikolaus Geyrhalter, is one of the
rare examples of contemporary documentary
filmmaking in which some of the most relevant
discussions within film- and cinema theory
appear to crystallize. In the already
impressive oeuvre of this young
filmmaker, Our Daily Bread reveals
another outstanding example of Nikolaus
Geyrhalters (script, directing,
cinematography) and Wolfgang Widerhofers
(script, editing) long-standing collaboration,
applying a reflexive, subtle and intelligent
approach, here to the subject of the industrialized
production of food.
The contemporary documentary film market
with its festivals, committees and broadcasting
networks predominantly regards film form
as subservient to content. Our Daily
Bread makes a critical intervention
against this tragic development and has
already achieved international recognition
through numerous awards, international
screenings and cinema distribution agreements.
Nonetheless this film deserves more acclaim
beyond the classical categorization of
what commonly is thought to make a good
documentary film.
In contrast to the very common documentary
film genres of reportage and ideological-
or educational driven styles, Geyrhalter
positions himself as a silent participating
observer and shows, predominantly through
wide-angle long shots and continuous tracking
shots, what happens behind the veils inside
the mechanisms of the industrialized food
production throughout Europe. The film
follows the living organisms, from their
source (seed, cells, artificial insemination,
etc.) in and outdoors, through the processes
of growth, feeding, pesticide treatment,
etc. to the final machinery of the harvest
and slaughter, and the various stages
of cleansing, portioning, packaging, etc.
What we see is activity in the close presence
of the camera, avoiding sensationalism
and the use of extreme close-ups
as affection-images in a Deleuzian sense;
instead the frequent use of wide-angle
views appear to create an optimal stage
of projection and reflection for the viewers.
Through Widerhofers evocative editing
style various forms of intelligence interact
and act upon each other: the machineries
and robots, the organisms, plants, animals
alive and dead and the human
employees in their daily routines, all
on an equal plane of observation. These
scenes of the food processing production
are regularly juxtaposed with mostly one,
sometimes several employees, during their
lunch breaks in fixed frontal medium close
shots, silently consuming their daily
bread. For brief moments they
and we are cut off from the distinct
noises and mechanisms of the machinery
(perhaps it is just as well that Smell-O-Vision
never really took off), and as viewers
we can take a break from the stream of
images and narrative structure of the
sequences.
The dramaturgical structure of the film
avoids providing any further factual information;
there are no numbers, places or interviews,
for example, nor does it offer any uttered
opinions or text in form of subtitles
or inter-titles. As a consequence, the
spectators are not only stimulated but
are also confronted with a whole range
of open questions that provoke them to
make up their own minds relative to what
they see. Such questions concern for example
the quality of processed food, automation
of labor, ethics of mass livestock breeding,
artificial insemination, slaughter, application
of insecticides.
In addition, the choice of avoiding any
interviews is obviously a very considered
one, which supports the clear-cut style
of Geyrhalters aesthetic approach;
his cinematography and Widerhofers
associative editing show and tell
in sequences of images held together by
a sophisticated dramaturgical structure
of contrasts, analogies, interconnections
and contradictions a complexity
of observations which the spectators are
invited to experience.
In Our Daily Bread, the technology
at work and on display as well as the
applied techniques in film style and form
create a polyphonic dialogue of a complex
apparatus where the mechanisms
of cinematography intersect and interact
consciously with those of the food production
industry. Consequently, in the spectators
perception the film operates within a
framework of tension between the visual
aesthetics and perceptual pleasures of
color patterns, the formalistically appealing
architecture, machinery, food in
process on conveyor belts, and the
subjective negotiation with ethical dimensions
of possible interpretations. The transparency
of this conscious application of the film
style takes the viewer into the subject
of investigation, not only with the purpose
of making the usually invisible processes
of mass-food production audio-visible,
but to ask us to make sense
of what we see in relation to our own
agency in this matter. In our daily responsibility
as consumers in our shopping habits and
food choices, the contract between the
spectator and the cinematic event, as
Jean-Louis Comolli proposed, here turns
into a conspiracy with no escape.
Our Daily Bread is a film that
allows space and reflexive interaction
with the interior psychological apparatus
of the spectators mind with a minimal
amount of manipulation (considering that
every film in its foundation constitutes
forms of manipulation, most basically
through the application of visual frames).
This is a rare achievement in the documentary
film genre, in which cinema comes to life,
transparently revealing its dispositif
of complex relations and meanings. In
Our Daily Bread the cinemas
implied ideological frameworks are put
to the fore through the conscious and
transparent workings of the apparatus,
in an open yet inclusive dialogue with
its audiences.
The website http://www.ourdailybread.at
offers additional information such as
stills from the film and behind the scenes,
press extracts, awards and festival participation,
a trailer and interviews.