Review: 'A Place at the Table'

In all the talk these days about the economy and jobs in the press each day one thing is regularly left out of the conversation and that is hunger. Even people with jobs can be living paycheck to paycheck and might not be able to afford food to feed their family at times. It’s interesting to be in the most affluent nation in the world, one that constantly does much to help other nations with hunger and it seems that we can’t agree on how to universally stop hunger within our own borders.  A Place at the Table is a documentary film that brings some of these issues to light.

A Place at the Tablefollows the lives of three families.  Rosie, a fifth grader who lives in a small house with her seven member family in Colorado.  Rosie’s family is struggling financially to the point where at times they don’t have enough food and do not know when they are going to get more. This has adverse effect on Rosie’s concentration in school which is causing her grades to fall because she is always hungry. The second person it follows is Barbie, a young mother in Philadelphia who grew up in poverty and is trying to provide a better life for her children with better nutrition being a big part of it. The last family if follows is of a second grader Tremonica from Mississippi whose health issues that are exacerbated by the type of food her mother can afford and has access to in their community. They live in food desert where getting fresh fruits and vegetables are not easy because they are not available in their community.  A Place at the Table also weaves in commentary from different experts on food policy, economic issues and government practices over the years regarding food and hunger in the United States.

A Place at the Tablefollows the trend that a lot “message” documentaries follow these days along with humanizing the issue with real people’s stories and they also show expert analysis with infographics. The infographics are like highly produced well-made super power point ads. The infographics and expert interviews are well placed throughout the film to help along the “plot” of the story they are telling. The filmmakers really do a great job of making you care about Rosie and Barbie and their plight in regards to obtaining food. One thing that doesn’t work though is that they lose track of the Tremonica and Mississippi food desert issue to focus more on Rosie’s storyline in school and Barbie’s storyline of being a young mother. Some of the issues in regards to food deserts are a bit left behind and the nature of extreme poverty in urban environments to obesity is glossed over.

Now with that issue aside it might be that there is only so much time that they have in the film and at least the issue is raised. You can see that this film’s goal is help spur dialogue on hunger in the country much like Waiting For Superman did for Education. The film is worth seeing as it does cover a well-rounded view of the issue from people affected, the people trying to help through charity and institutions trying to solve it. Hopefully this film does achieve its goals it set out to do.