Botany of Desire

October 28, 2009

the book was a great read.

hopefully the series will stand up as well

Documentary on Pollan's 'The Botany of Desire'

Tamara Straus, Special to The Chronicle

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Over the past decade, environmental writer Michael Pollan has become a kind of

modern-day Thoreau, an intellectual rock star who packs lecture halls, abides

fan clubs and has altered the way millions of people think about his big

subject: man's relationship with nature and food. Lanky, bespectacled and not

particularly telegenic, Pollan, who lives in Berkeley, is proof that cults can

be formed around brainy people, too.

--

Images

View More Images

--

So it is not surprising that, one by one, Pollan's best-selling books are

begetting television shows and films. " The Omnivore's Dilemma, " Pollan's 2006

indictment of the American industrial food system, heavily informed the recent

documentaries " Food, Inc. " and " King Corn. "

Pollan's 2008 work, " In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, " which explores

the relationship between nutrition and the Western diet, was the subject of

dozens of talk shows.

Now, with the two-hour PBS special " The Botany of Desire " premiering tonight, we

have the first, pure Pollan adaptation.

Based on the 2001 book of the same name and directed and produced by Michael

Schwarz, " The Botany of Desire " is as faithful a TV adaptation as TV adaptations

come. True, it may disappoint readers who delight in Pollan's supple prose and

whimsically learned digressions.

But for the uninitiated, the show provides a visually interesting and

informative tour of four crops - the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato

- that Pollan argues reflect different aspects of human desire.

Pollan's original thesis is that people and plants form a reciprocal

relationship. We have cultivated the apple because of our desire for sweetness,

the tulip for beauty, the marijuana plant for intoxication and the potato for

control over our sustenance. In turn, these plants have transformed human

history.

Longtime friends

Schwarz, who has been a friend of Pollan's since the late 1970s, said he read

" The Botany of Desire " in manuscript form and immediately saw its television

potential. But it took him eight years to secure the necessary $1.2 million in

funding. Why?

" For us, marijuana was the equivalent of the third rail, " Schwarz said from his

office in Menlo Park. " We got funding, then we lost it because we wanted to

devote a fourth of the program to Michael's exploration of marijuana. "

It was not until Schwarz received a grant from the National Science Foundation

and used some of the money to shoot the marijuana chapter that PBS understood

that the show could not be perceived as an endorsement of pot and provided

significant funding.

Like the book, the PBS show is divided into four parts, one for each crop.

Pollan, wearing an earthy (and clashing) brown shirt and sport coat, serves as

the onscreen guide, interpreting a quickly moving stream of original footage and

archival imagery.

There is an entertaining cast of experts - farmers, agricultural scholars and

historians, mostly from the book. And actress Frances McDormand provides a fluid

and at times amusing narration. (She, too, is a Pollan fan.)

Around the globe

Schwarz cannot re-create the experience of Pollan's erudite and often intimate

narrative style. But he does take viewers on globe-trotting journey - from the

apple orchards of New England and Kazakhstan to the potato fields of Peru and

Idaho.

We meet underground cannabis cultivators, whom Pollan calls " the best gardeners

of my generation, " and see the bustling Aalsmeer market outside Amsterdam, a

warehouse the size of 200 football fields where 19 million flowers from all over

the world change hands daily.

The show is at its best when underscoring Pollan's message about the dangers of

industrial agriculture. In the sections devoted to the apple and the potato,

Schwarz moves the viewer from the crops' origination in Kazakhstan and the Andes

to the histories of their transplantation to U.S. soil.

Then we learn the bad news - Americans' preference for a few types of apples and

potatoes has led to a " monoculture " approach to agriculture. The result: Most

farmers rely on pesticides to protect crops from disease.

Schwarz said his goal was to make the crops, not Pollan, the main characters of

the show, and in this regard he has succeeded. The TV version of " The Botany of

Desire " imbues plants with anthropomorphic qualities. They seem to cry out,

" Take care of me. I have powers. I'll make you pay! "

Varieties of potatoes

We learn, for example, that the Peruvians have successfully cultivated more than

500 varieties of potatoes for more than 8,000 years, whereas the Irish's

singular cultivation of the lumper potato paved the way for the great famine. In

the 1840s, a spore wiped out the lumper in a matter of weeks, leading to the

death of 1 out of 8 people.

" The Irish potato famine is the great cautionary tale about monocultures of all

kinds, " says Pollan in the film. " It's a parable about the importance of

biodiversity, and it's a parable we forget at our peril. "

For hard-core Pollan fans, " The Botany of Desire " will be a reminder that

Pollan's first best-seller contains the seeds of the ideas he developed in

subsequent work. For people unfamiliar with the work, said Schwarz, " The show

should be a pleasant surprise, and maybe even a revelation. "

The Botany of Desire: Documentary. 8 tonight on KQED.

E-mail comments to home.

This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Sign In

Botany of Desire

Recommended Posts

Guest guest

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Guest guest

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Join the conversation

Support the Ashram

Join Groups

Top Downloads