From the corn-fed cows that beef up our hamburgers to the corn syrup that thickens our soda, corn has become a major crop in the United States. In their documentary film "King Corn," best friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis take a trip to the heartland to discover the methods of producing the United States' favorite crop. The film follows the production of their acre of corn month by month, from the initial inquiries in February to the harvest in November.
In the months between, viewers watch Cheney and Ellis care for their newborn crop while they explore how the massive local corn production affects the community. Coincidentally, Ellis and Cheney, who met in college at Yale, both have roots in the same farming town in Iowa through their grandfathers. For this reason, they chose Greene, Iowa, with a population of 1,015, for their trial in agricultural life. The two even manage to visit the graves of their grandfathers and meet long-lost cousins who still live in the town.
The film took more than three years to make, one to shoot and two to edit over 350 hours of footage. The entirety was shot using a handheld camera, mostly handled by Aaron Woolf, Ellis' director, co-producer and cousin. Much of the film portrays Greene, Iowa and parts of the state as a cultivated prairie land by shooting scenes from the highways.
Some of these shots are headache-inducing in that the abundance of corn is clearly visible from any point along the "corn belt;" elevators, gigantic storage spaces for corn kernels, are found in virtually every town in Iowa, and along with the essential machinery, tractors were scattered all about. Many parts were highly comical, such as the attempt to produce high fructose corn syrup in their home kitchen and the nosedive Ellis takes into a surplus pile of corn kernels the size of a mountain.
The film is brilliantly executed with a variety of interviews with experts on food and agriculture, including Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," Ricardo Salvador of the University of Iowa, Walter Willet of Harvard University, as well as many folks from the town of Greene, whose lives have always revolved around the annual harvest.
Though "King Corn" reveals many shocking statistics and emphasizes the health risks associated with a diet heavy in corn, Ellis and Cheney do not follow the paths laid by Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock. Their hope was neither to politicize the corn industry by mounting a campaign nor to exacerbate the already-known fact that the government is partially responsible for what this country eats.
As clearly shown through their genial attitudes throughout the adventure, Cheney and Ellis were more concerned with the journey of the crop itself and with solving the initial puzzle of how their isotope analyses (hair samples that show the body's contents) showed they were practically "made of corn." Viewers can digest the film themselves while munching corn-laden theatre snacks at the E Street Cinema.
