Food
Food
| 08 June 1992 (USA)
Food Trailers

Examines the human relationship with food by showing breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Reviews
Heitor Caramez

What strikes me about this movie it is how little I can give to make much sense of it. I guess it has some social comments on it, about our consumption and our consumerism society, on life and everything else. But most importantly, it doesn't really matter, you get to just experience, pay attention and to be in that state of not getting it. I think that might be the experience to have, unlearning things. Turning them upside down, to transform them. In a personal level it affected me, after seeing a sequence of his shorts and this one, to be more conscious on how we act and driven our desires, you know that feeling of salivating when you think about a bacon sandwich, it has stopped, and it was interesting to be that far apart, to change that programming to one that wasn't completely destructive and irrational. All this conversation, reminded me of that Elliott Smith song called, "A distorted reality is now a necessity to be free."

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MartinHafer

Jan Svankmajer is the most unusual stop-motion filmmaker whose work I have seen. Instead of the typical models which are brought to life using this method, Svankmajer takes everyday objects or creepy stuff he's found, perhaps, in antique shops to create films that are truly unique. I hate reviewing the films of Jan Svanmajer, as each time I see one of his films I am convinced that it's THE weirdest film the man has ever made. And yet, time and again, I find I am wrong, as some other film of his turns out to be even weirder. This is definitely true of "Food"--a truly bizarre and fanciful film that is really impossible to describe--you just need to see it for yourself. I will TRY to briefly explain what the film is like. As in other Svankmajer films, this one uses stop-motion but in this film it's mostly to animate people--making them move in a very jerky and robotic manner. What, exactly, they do is beyond belief but always involves the eating process. It consists of a segment about several different meals and all are VERY creative and ultra-strange--so strange that you might want to show this one to others. And, unlike a few of his films, this one is okay to show to most kids--it's creepy but in a very cartoony way. And, interestingly, it also uses some claymation which is blended into the characters. Very much worth seeing--especially if you are a bit weird yourself (which I happily am). I assume that this is NOT for everyone's taste.Not to be missed!

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Lee Eisenberg

Jan Svankmajer has portrayed many wacky things, but "Jidlo" is a whole new level. Portraying bizarre things happening during each meal, he goes all out. The first vignette "Breakfast" seems to be a slight repeat of his earlier movie "Et Cetera". The most eye-opening vignette is "Lunch", in which two men at a table can't get the waiter's attention, and resort to eating their plates, utensils, clothes, and even the table...but they don't intend to stop there. With "Dinner", Svankmajer decides to be grosser than the Farrelly brothers could ever dream of being.Maybe this isn't Svankmajer's best movie ever, but it's still worth seeing.

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ionford

This is an okay Svankmajer short that comes with Conspirators of Pleasure on the Kino DVD release.It's worth seeing for that movie but seems much longer than it actually it is.What's interesting is how each chapter seems to deliberately pare itself down in the level of detail given each chapter. The first segment, "Breakfast" is uniform in it's depiction of each actor's "meal". "Lunch" (the most obviously meaningful of the three) moves along a bit faster and "Dinner" just crams as many brief encounters into a couple minutes as possible.Svankmajer, it would seem, is pretty serious about breakfast and pretty lazy by dinnertime, but I like Dinner the best.7 out of 10

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