Yesterday, after coping with my hmo and doing some necessary things at my desk I decided I needed to escape for a while to the movies. I saw Michael Clayton which seemed the best classic sort of movie I have seen in a while. I thought going to the movies might even be an escape from the thinking and writing about food issues which I ought to be doing, but not so. The food system is everywhere.
An attorney who has been working for years on a liability suit against an agribusiness company goes off the rail - he's bipolar - and begins taking the plaintiffs' part. The huge corporate law firm's "janitor" (Michael Clayton / George Clooney) is sent in to manage the attorney having the meltdown. There are many interesting twists and turns involving things like an idealistic Iowa farm girl who has lost parents and siblings to the offending herbicide and is living with her older sister's family, the fantasy novel which Clayton's young son is reading, and the dysfunctional, addicted, but ultimately redemptive bonds of Clayton's cop culture family.
One is left wondering if the crazy attorney might not have been the sanest one after all, his break a break out of amorality. And the backdrop of greenwashing in the agrichem ads has to make us all wonder if we are all the crazy ones, buying into their system in the many ways we do.
Enough. The food system is everywhere, and it's a good movie. Go see it.
1 comment:
Clayton not Deaver. Deaver is Watergate!
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