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Go Further review
:. Director: Ron Mann
:. Genre: Documentary
:. Running Time: 1:30
:. Year: 2003
:. Country: Canada
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Rather than just portraying the problem and offering no solution, in Go Further, director Ron Mann (Grass) chronicles Woody Harrelson's consciousness-raising tour about sustainable living on a hemp fueled bus down from Oregon to Southern California, offering viable solutions that can help make the world a little better.
In a country saturated by junk food and just junk in general, Harrelson's tour offers alternative choices. As in the book Fast Food Nation, once you know where some of this stuff comes from, how the animals are treated and what conditions and abuse workers toil under so that you can eat a Whopper for under $2, it all becomes indigestible. When Harrelson tells goofy, likable Steve The Junk Food Addict that all dairy products feature blood and pus, he's incredulous. But after visiting a dairy farm and seeing cows with distended udders, he realizes that it's true. He continues to spread the gospel about blood and pus with a megaphone.
Rather than just offering a diatribe against corporate America or ambush blame tactics a la Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine), Mann offers solutions. From the organic raw food chef aboard the bus to a paper manufacturer that doesn't harm trees to a worm tea vendor/farmer who offers an alternative to cancer causing pesticides, the very valuable lessons in showing "the better way", healthier for the earth and the population are valid.
Making "ordinary Joe" Steve the star of this film works on various levels. One, to only focus on Woody Harrelson, who has already completed his journey and is now focused on teaching others may be offputting and theoretically impossible for others to put into practice because of how advanced he is. By focusing on Steve, a junk food junkie horndog who spews out sayings and is completely disarming, anyone with even a mild interest in this earth can look at him and decide that maybe eating at 7 11 for every meal is not the best way to go. Maybe going to a farmer's market and getting seasonal food is better than buying bananas and tomatoes that taste like cardboard. By having a movie star as the vehicle for change instead of the main attraction, the general public can focus more attention on the issues.
Part of the charm of the film is following the people invited onboard. Sarah, a college student who shops at the Gap, never exercises and doesn't pay much attention as to where her meals come from, joins the tour. By the end, like Steve, she has tried yoga, is cycling, watching what she eats and is in general more conscious of the world around her. And that's Harrelson's goal. That it is possible.
In one unsettling scene in Oregon, a lumber mill town, Steve happens upon a group of youth in a truck inhaling something from an aerosol can. She inhales spray and then guzzles down soda from a two liter plastic bottle and the message is clear. Aren't we all like her? Unconscious, gulping down whatever's in front of us? Obviously, there are varying levels of addiction, but the parallel is well placed.
Anji Milanovic
 Documentary Reviews: 1998 - 2011
Documentary Reviews: 2012 - present
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