I thought the film had some really impressive cinematography for a subject as humble as good, ol' American corn. The stop-motion sequences were particularly brilliant, and the original music provided just the right amount of depth without being overbearing. To be honest, I thought the two main characters were interesting, and their film techniques were definitely so, but otherwise boring. Their shared family history was a nice coincidence but didn't do much to support the overall agenda or narrative of the documentary.
I found the film very informative and educational - it was great to learn so many bittersweet things about corn, its production and distribution, and the role of maize in our diet. I saw on the film's website that the filmmakers tried to avoid eating any corn for a full month, and though I haven't read up on how well they did, I imagine it was incredibly difficult.
But what I got most out of this film is the motivation to use stop-motion. Seriously...Fisher-Price toys bringing down the corn industry? Awesome.
I agree with Ben in that the filmmakers were just ,well… boring. Their choice of autobiographical style failed short of the film’s goals. Their connection to Greene through ancestry was not a sufficient narrative to drive the story. The awkward autobiographies interweaved in the documentary took away from the broader social commentary that was absent from the film. I would have liked to learn more about the social and political aspects of king corn. Minutes of transitional footage spent on driving, etc. could have been replaced by a more in depth analysis/context of the problem. The farmer or other characters that have been affected by the corn industry might have been better main characters. They tackled an intensive subject in a simplified way, and perhaps it was a good introduction to the production of corn in the U.S. I can understand their motives for wanting to buy a piece of land and grow corn, etc…though I feel it could have been omitted. The story could still have been told using beautiful imagery without the lackluster personal narratives.
ReplyDeleteI didn't dislike the film, just my critiques.
I agree with Sarah in that the growing of a field of corn was a weak way to introduce the subject. Part of the reason I think was that they spend so long telling that story with the first half of the piece, and rushed their real topic of America's corn consumption into the latter half. There was a long gap between when they established that their hair had a lot of corn in it to when they explain how/why. I also thought from an aesthetic view point that the beginning seemed poorly planned/shot. I noticed several takes where the audio boom came into the shot, which was distracting to me and kind of took me out of the story. The bigger kicker is that they didn't do it later on, communicating to me that it was a mistake rather than a stylistic effect.
ReplyDeleteSome things I think they did especially well was holding some suspense, as much as you could for a film on corn. Specifically I think they did well in the scene where they revealed that their corn tasted like saw dust. It was a good way to transition about the post processing of corn. I also think the camera work was much better than in Sound and Fury. Interviews were framed well and the 16:9 aspect ratio helped it look like a film. While the film was a bit of a drag at times, I did enjoy the narrative journey behind it. The B-roll footage was timed well to help tell the story since many of the interviews were pretty boring to listen to without other visually simulating footage. The interview with the cab driver helped complete their "journey" to track their corn by providing a real life touching story about how the corn that they grew really can have a negative effect. Over all I enjoyed the film
oops, sorry that last post was mine but I was logged into the wrong account.
ReplyDeleteKing Corn is an example of what I'd call a contrived documentary. By contrived, I mean that the narrative was pretty much made up by the filmmakers (i.e. the objective of growing an acre of corn). Contrived documentaries have always been fascinating to me. Some people feel that they aren't really documentaries, because what's being documented, wouldn't have been documented, had the filmmakers chosen not to pursue their objective. A similar situation exists in the documentary Super Size Me. Morgan Spurlock created the situation to be documented (i.e. eating only McDonald's for 30 days).
ReplyDeleteOf course, those that have issues with the documentary are looking at the medium through a narrow lens. On the surface, one might assume that a documentary is supposed to document something that would have happened in "real life", whatever that means. Unfortunately, documentaries alter reality, regardless of how planned they are. The best one can hope to do is capture some larger truth. In this sense, I think King Corn succeeded. Of course the movie wasn't perfect, but then no movie is.
Like the rest of you, I have mixed feelings about this documentary. My criticism for this movie is the exact opposite of Sound and Fury. I thought the film making was much better in King Corn, but the story wasn't nearly as intriguing as Sound and Fury. As far as the narrative goes, it really didn't reveal much of anything to me that I didn't already know. I grew up on a farm where my parents, uncles, and grandparents raised cattle. We raise cattle who only feed on grass, and butcher our own meet. We know exactly what we are eating (when we cook at home at least) When my fellow citizens of the Columbus, Texas area raise show cattle for the FFA or the fair, they fatten them up by feeding corn based feed similar to what we saw in the film. I thought the attempt to make corn syrup in their kitchen was cute, but not that necessary. I also felt that the interweaving of the family narrative was a bit awkward and wasn't intertwined well with the corn's journey into America's consumer society.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the filming itself goes (besides the awkward and obvious boom shots) I thought it was really pretty. The cinematography throughout was nice and the interviews were set up much more professionally. Of course, I thought the stop motion was awesome and I can definitely appreciate how many hours that must have taken.
My favorite part of the piece was the statement the owner of the cattle company who "fattens" up cattle to sell to slaughter houses said: "If Americans wanted grass fed meat, we would sell it. But Americans want cheap food."
Amanda beat me to it - King Corn was just the opposite of Sound and Fury in terms of why it works. King Corn seemed to lack the compelling and cohesive narrative elements that made Sound and Fury works so well. Visually, compared to Sound and Fury anyway,
ReplyDeleteKing Corn was very good.
Many of the story problems have already been mentioned, but I think they can be summarized by noting that the narrative was disjointed and at times incoherent. While I felt the filmmakers familial ties to the industry took nothing away from the film, it was insufficient to guide the film. Several times we were taken somewhere and just dropped off - a good example of this is when they made corn syrup. They built up the subject as if it were some conspiracy, but finally made it at home to say... it doesn't taste good. Great. There was lots of good info too, however I felt it could have been stripped down or at least reorganized.
Visually the film was pretty impressive. The filmmakers knew how to communicate through images. Better than all the numbers they gave us, the shots of piles of corn, the cattle yards, etc. showed us the state of the industry. Where they never came out and explicitly took a stand, the empty acre and the conclusion of the film said it for them.
I think many parts could have been cut out like mentioned above. But I think trying to tackle such a huge topic that can goes as deep as the roots of the corn is very tough. I agree that some of the sequences like the making of the corn syrup and the multiple times we saw them eating could have been cut out. I really enjoyed all of the footage of the encounters with the farm-folk. It gave me a depressing but yet inspired feeling from how those people live their lives. The documentary showed how a farmers way of living was connected to a family with diabities in New York. I thought the filmmakers did a good job of making small-world points like that. I personally liked their personalities, because I felt like they mixed well with the music, the visuals, and the tough-to-make-interesting topic of corn cropping. I must say that the seeing through the stomach of a cow kind of freaked me out though haha.
ReplyDeleteThey did a stellar job of shooting the film. The center of our nation can be a dull place at times, but they did a great job of turning each season into an art that made me feel or remember what it felt like to be in those different seasons. I think it is great how two people can come across a topic that is a huge part of our lives, dedicate many months towards it, learn a plethora of information, and then hand that over to an audience to enjoy and ponder over. I would say in the end that the documentary had an effect on me because I have recently found myself looking at food products and saying: "Oh shit! this has corn in it!!!!"
The film also inspired me to sleep in a field of soon-to-harvest corn before I die!
Haha. I as well have definitely taken a greater notice to the amount of food with corn or a corn derivative as an ingredient. I think that's wonderful. King Corn raised an awareness and concern regarding the side effects of the amount of corn we eat in our foods. The brilliant part about this is that they did it without making a big fuss about it. So many social documentaries of today take an issue and just shove a bunch of negative information down the viewers throat (anyone seen The Corporation?? GAHHH shoot me now). As a viewer I backlash when this happens. King Corn, however, was so much more pure in its exposition. I didn't feel like I was being abused by information, and I was able to derive my own conclusions about corn. I loved that about King Corn; I wasn't spoon fed.
ReplyDeleteI agree with some earlier comments that some of the narrative was a little lengthy and possibly unnecessary. The family connection was brought up by a few others, and although it was neat, it wasn't necessary for the story. It may have been a bit more solid at 60min instead of 88. Someone else noted the cinematography, which I thought was very well done. There were some very beautiful shots, especially those of the fields, and the obscenely large yellow corn piles. Lastly the Fisher-Price stop-motion models were both fun and effective. Great way to connect information visually. They reminded me to always think without tradition, because as we know, a little creativity can go a long way. (Could you imagine the information on title cards? Lame.) Overall, I really enjoyed and learned from King Corn.
I completely agree with some of you about the great documentary that this was. The passe of it and most of the shots were interesting and fun to watch. This documentary the style of the editing and the way that the story is told really captures the viewers attention. But even though most of the documentary was fun and exciting, I think that there were a couple of things that could have been done differently or better.
ReplyDeleteWhen the documentary started, for a moment I thought : "How in the world are they going to do this?" I mean, picking a simple subject such as corn and follow it? Is it even possible. Of course, as we saw on the documentary, we noticed that it was near impossible to do such a thing, but I really liked the fact that they decided to keep going. A lot of more characters and interesting topics jumped on board and I think that was really interesting. The honesty and stories from the farmers were interesting and I wished I could have seen more of that. I think it would have given it a little more power.
One thing that I think that it would have helped this documentary make it a little bit stronger was the sound. There were a couple of booms and a lot of the most important dialogue got lost because of the way sound was recorded. Maybe it was because of budget purposes, but if they have had one sound person, I think it could of been stronger.
I have to admit though, at the end of the documentary, one of my biggest questions was, Who harvest, or how does a piece of corn that I buy at the supermarket really makes it there? Considering that most of the corn they produce is not eatable, then how do they make the one that is? But that could be another documentary itself.
I think that where this film failed (in my eyes, of course), was the attempt to cover so, so, so much ground. It began here, then went there, then traveled to there, then went back here, then went even further to there, and then...and then... I ended up becoming less and less interested each time that the film took a completely new turn. I thought the ending was among us, and then an entirely different side of the story came into sight. It is incredibly hard to tackle such a broad subject (like corn production), so that's when the delete button becomes key. If you can't fully and coherently explain everything, then become intent on only explaining some. The jumpy, disconnected aura that this film gave me brought up one word in particular for some reason - hokey. It did feel very contrived (like Jason said), but for me, that feeling did not satisfy and really, the best word to describe my opinion of the film is that it was hokey. A little too over the top, a little too disjointed, a little too broad, and a little too uninformative on a tighter level (if that makes sense).
ReplyDeleteI won't lie. I didn't really enjoy it.
Overall I thought the film was enjoyable and for the most part captivating. Though, I do agree that the film was slightly long and throwing out certain elements would have improved the film’s overall flow. In response to Traci’s post, I felt some parts were a little hokey as well; one in particular was the cab driver scene. His whole thread seemed a little to “matter of fact.” The structure of this particular scene within the larger story made it seem like the two main characters happened to jump in a cab with a guy who happen to have a deep tie into the negative aspects of corn syrup. This took me out of the story and left me wondering more and more about how many cabbies that went through to find this guy. It can go without saying, but the boom shots didn’t help the film in this regard either. On the flip side though, I really enjoyed the film’s attention to simplicity. I thought the stop motion, the time-lapse stills of the emerging corn, and the d.i.y. drawing approach graphs all brought flavor to a film that would otherwise be considered a tribulation to be completely attentive to.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with what many pointed out before me: the fact is that this movie really did try to do a lot and because of that, it didn’t have as much of a focus as the film we watched before, Sound and Fury. There were moments when I was watching King Corn, that I would ask myself what was this documentary about? And the obvious answer is of course, corn, but I guess I needed a more specific purpose in order to be able to be completely engaged with the film. I also appreciated many parts of the film including the cinematography, and yes, stop motion. Has anyone tried to do that before? It is incredibly time-consuming, so when I saw this pulled off really professionally, I was pretty impressed.
ReplyDeleteAll of those bells and whistles, as great as they are, can’t replace the story of the film, which needed a little more work in this piece. I agreed with Sarah before about having more of a focus on the social and political aspects of corn production, but it doesn’t have to be spoon-fed to us as Alex pointed out. You can still have enough commentary and information from both perspectives without it becoming a propaganda film against the corn industry. If there was more of an emphasis on that aspect, I think I probably would have enjoyed it more. It was still pretty good nonetheless.