The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-27)

23

EZ

THE

WASHINGTON

POST

.

FRIDAY,

MAY

27, 2022

Movies

Ratings guide

Masterpiece



Very good



Okay



Poor



Also reviewed

Fiddler’s Journey

to the Big Screen

looks at the making

of t he 1971 film

“Fiddler on the

Roof.” 24

Plus

Common Sense

Media 25

Opening next

week

Crimes of the

Future is a sci-fi

thriller from David

Cronenberg.

Bowen Yang and

Margaret Cho star in

the gay rom-com

Fire Island.

The music of the Big

Easy is showcased

in the documentary

Jazz Fest: A New

Orleans Story.

An Italian teen looks

into her father’s

disappearance in A

Chiara.

A w oman thinks

she’s being stalked

in Watcher.

Echoes of the

Empire: Beyond

Genghis Khan is a

documentary about

Mongolia.

The designer of the

Eiffel Tower falls in

love in Eiffel.

Benediction is a

biopic about poet

Siegfried Sassoon.

In the Nixon White

House, a transcriber

finds some missing

audiotapes in 18 1 / 2.

following Andrés’s career, though

perhaps in a more digestible form

than, say, his detail-rich book,

“We Fed an Island.” Howard takes

detours, for instance, to give

credit to the chef’s mentor, Rob-

ert Egger of D.C. Central Kitchen,

or to give screen time to favorite

Andrés topics, such as migrant

farmworkers, but without getting

overtly political.

The director’s best decision

was to wander into the Andrés

household and talk to his wife,

Patricia Fernandez de la Cruz,

and their three daughters, who

candidly share their thoughts. “I

worry a lot when he goes” to a

SEE FEED ON 24

We Feed People 

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC/SEBASTIAN LINDSTROM

BY TIM CARMAN

“We Feed People,” Ron How-
ard’s engrossing documentary
about chef José Andrés and his
relief organization, World Cen-
tral Kitchen, begins with a disas-
ter. It’s not the kind you’d expect.
As Andrés rides in the back of a
large all-terrain vehicle, loaded
with hot food to distribute to
North Carolina residents follow-
ing 2018’s Hurricane Florence,
the truck suddenly slides off a
road that the driver assumed was
there, somewhere under all the
floodwaters.
Perhaps Howard couldn’t re-
sist the drama of the moment: a
disabled truck, taking on water,
in an isolated part of the state
where all you can see are trees,
gray skies, power lines, raging
floodwaters and a few lights on

The unflappable spirit of José Andrés

the horizon that hint at civiliza-

tion. But I suspect Howard want-

ed to show how Andrés deals

with setback. The chef adopts

this almost preternaturally calm

demeanor, as if he were trying to

do nothing more than save a dish,

not potentially save lives.

This illuminating moment of

failure captures at least two traits

about Andrés, which Howard will

probe deeper in his doc: the chef

turned humanitarian’s ability to

adapt quickly to conditions on

the ground and his unflappable

pursuit of feeding people in cri-

sis, no matter the obstacles. In

the era of climate change, How-

ard seems to be saying, Mother

Nature may be an unpredictable

force, but we have our own

flesh-and-blood counterpart: this

voluminous, combustible, un-

stoppable Spaniard named An-

drés.

Howard is smart enough to

know this narrative is too neat,

and he gently tries to uncover the

impulses that drive Andrés,

sometimes to the detriment of

the chef’s health, his family and

those around him. The director

gets Andrés to talk about his

childhood and his “complicated”

relationship with his mother, a

nurse, whose “moments of inten-

sity” compelled him to find “ways

to be away from home.” But just

as soon as Howard and Andrés

touch upon these sensitive topics,

they drop them, ready to investi-

gate other storms of life.

World Central Kitchen has

been around a dozen years, born

in 2010 during the deadly earth-

quake in Haiti, but the organiza-

tion came into its own after

Hurricane Maria slammed into

Puerto Rico. Relying on original

cinematography and archival

footage from WCK’s team and

collaborators, Howard takes

viewers from one devastated area

to another, whether the Bahamas

after Hurricane Dorian or New

York City during the pandemic,

introducing us to some of the

staff and volunteers who make

the organization the new model

for disaster relief.

Some of this is well-worn terri-

tory for those who have been

Ron Howard’s absorbing

documentary follows

a chef on a mission

José Andrés carries a tray of

food from a helicopter as Sam

Bloch, emergency response

director at World Central

Kitchen, follows. Ron Howard

uses original cinematography

and archival footage from

WCK’s team and collaborators

to take viewers from one

devastated area to another.