I watched “The Founder” (2017) during the week that Tropical Storm Harvey devastated Houston and for some reason, I connected the two. From a distance, way up high, hurricanes are truly a thing of beauty to behold, both in design and power. Down at the surface, however, things can get ugly and downright inhumane. My understanding of the McDonald’s restaurant story has mostly been lofty – a quintessential American success (with vague undercurrents of controversy). This beautifully filmed, superbly acted adaptation provides a street-level (gutter-level?) version, a rat-eat-rat, greed-is-good, coffee-is-for-closers version that only a Lomanesque salesman like Ray Kroc could love.
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When “Super Size Me” was released in 2004, the whole reality/documentary thing was fresh and new. Now we have ice-truckin’ deadly-catchin’ cable shows dedicated to someday (hopefully?) capturing the first death live on air (George Clooney once said there will eventually be a Snuff TV channel). Watching Morgan Spurlock gorge himself on Big Macs for a month until he has liver damage was pretty edgy stuff six years ago. Like with any activist documentarianism, we’ll never know what he edited out (I think he ate more than three “meals” a day), but compared to Michael Moore, it’s pretty good journalism.
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