If you want to feel like a louse, try facing the prospect of writing a negative review of a documentary about a soft-spoken, bread- baking Buddhist priest.
Edward Espe Brown, the subject of “How to Cook Your Life,” gently encourages the joyful mind, the kind mind, the big mind. In the face of such nobility, you hope to put all snarky inclinations aside.
So with the urgency of an organic farmer checking for aphids, I searched for the positive in German director Doris Dorrie’s film about Brown, who wrote “The Tassajara Bread Book,” co-owns Greens restaurant in San Francisco and teaches at Zen centers everywhere. And then I realized that to lie or sugarcoat, even to protect a very well-meaning filmmaker and avoid the wrath of good vegetarians everywhere, would be wrong.
The documentary plays like a long, dull parody of pure living. Blue jays caw, Buddhists chant, cats groom themselves, and indistinct but sincere people make solemn statements — like “I really like kale.”
There’s no need to play Mike Wallace when the topics at hand are cooking and Buddhism. But is it worth making a feature-length documentary when the most challenging question you pose is, “So you just use compost?” and the only deviation from sunshiny thoughts is some unspoken but evident disapproval over the presence of turkey meal in the organic fertilizer?
We don’t learn enough about Brown. He started cooking at age 19 or so. He liked it. He is not perfect, and, in fact, recounts how angry he can get when his sponge won’t stay on the counter — sometimes it falls into the sink! For dramatic effect, Dorrie stagily shows him wrestling with a too-tight cheese wrapper and bottle cap.
The important message he’s trying to get across is that Americans don’t cook enough at home. “It turns out we’ll pay a lot of money not to cook,” he intones. “Not to confront a potato.” This statement, mildly amusing at best, prompts gales of laughter, both from Brown and the lotus-posed congregation listening to him. Processed foods disturb him (“plastic is not sincere”), and we need to be more in touch with our food (“our hands don’t get to do much anymore”). Amen!
I certainly agree with all that. Anyone who goes to see this preachy film of their own volition is likely to believe it. Everyone else will likely fall into a stupor. When I roused from mine, I found myself with a desire to reach for my much-used copy of Brown’s bread book and to knead myself up a lovely loaf of his potato bread. Then maybe I’d cut a slice, pile it with the last heirloom tomatoes of the season, arugula and — forgive me — four fat slices of bacon.
“How to Cook Your Life”
PG-13 for brief strong language. 1 hour, 33 minutes. Directed by Doris Dorrie. Featuring Edward Espe Brown. Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
