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THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM
Director: John Chester MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:31 Release Date: 5/10/19 (limited); 5/17/19 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 16, 2019 Director John Chester, along with his wife Molly, decided to start a farm. It wouldn't be one of those modern-day monstrosities, where animals are kept in tight spaces, or one restricted to a single market, with a single kind of plant going on for acres. It would be like something out of a children's storybook, where various animals and plants would live in harmony. Chester's approach in documenting the gradual rise of this place in The Biggest Little Farm has a similar simplicity. It begins as a dream, presented as in animated vignettes that entirely gloss over the financial investments that made the farm possible (Is this something that anybody can do, or were the Chesters just luckily connected to the right people?). Then, John and his wife have to deal with the day-to-day struggles of actually seeing their vision become viable. There is something rather soothing in the way Chester, who highlights his career as a cameraman for nature documentaries, assembles his imagery. It was captured over the course of about four years on the farm, and in that time, we get a sense of how nature, despite the interference of humankind, can repair itself, as long as humans stay out of the way as much as possible. The film deals mostly with the issues of getting to that point. The farm begins as an arid patch of land, dried up after a drought and years of being the home to a single kind of fruit tree. Once they get things going, with the help of a lot of people, the working farm attracts new pests, with the bountiful produce on the trees and the free-roaming animals that make easy pickings for wild predators. Chester's near-constant narration possesses a quality of aw-shucks ignorance that tries a bit too hard to elevate the drama. It's also a bit unnecessary, since the revelations of, say, how to get rid of snails or what benefits coyotes might have in maintaining the farm's natural order are right there on the screen. Still, The Biggest Little Farm is fascinating, calming, and inspiring. It's also a great advertisement for the farm that the Chesters have made, but one almost doesn't care that we're being sold their products (and tours to see all the now-famous animals) at the very end. First and foremost, the film is selling a simple, hopeful idea. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for mild thematic elements)
