A Film About Coffee

Finally managed to watch this at a local event (Chilean coffee culture is just sprouting) and after having read up a bit about the new world of coffee, I was ready to enjoy another immersion, this time in visual format.

Spent a good hour marveling at the process from the plants to the cup. A lengthier piece might have provided more depth, but there was plenty to enjoy, particularly in the great interviews with the true coffee lunatics. Coffee should be sexy, and this is good coffee porn.

Main turnoff for me was the use of the classic cliché of the "poor simple peasant" whose life is made possible by those willing to pay the 7 dollar cup at the other end of the production chain. Only when one of the importers speaks of "direct trade" does the condescending verticality of the process fade out, marginally.

I'm a coffee devotee, for sure, with more knowledge about coffee than average, but I expected to learn something new. (After all, who but coffee nuts are going to go see a film about nothing but?) I learned nothing. The film is truly beautiful, and some of the images they captured of the producers and retailers were stunning. Unfortunately, that is all the movie is.

I was hoping for some beauty, as coffee is produced in some of the prettiest areas on earth, but I also expected guidance through the coffee process. You could make an argument that the images are there, but the way the visuals were presented reminded me of a collage. Think of how a collage compares to a well-researched magazine article, and you will understand where I feel the movie fell down. If you are looking to increase your knowledge of coffee, coffee production or even the structure/politics of the coffee world, you will be disappointed.

I would have been happy with this as a summer TV filler piece, but I paid full price at my local indie movie theatre. It wasn't worth it.

Disclaimer: I only like dark-roasted coffee. For that reason, I was entirely unseduced by this film, produced by boutique coffee distributors most of whom insist that to appreciate the nuances of coffee one must not dark roast it. Nearly every cup of brewed coffee depicted in this production looked very dilute, the kind of brew which induces in me a gag reflex. Some of it looked to me like coffee produced through running water through a filter basket of used grounds a second time. In attempting to relay the layered nuances perceivable in coffee, one fellow suggested that coffee should be consumed at 130F. Lukewarm, dilute, light-roasted coffee? No, thank you.

Yes, I like coffee dripped through a Melitta filter. But it has to be dark. Given the choice between light-roasted coffee and tea, I´ll take the tea. In fact, for all x, given the choice between light-roasted coffee and x, I´ll take the x. Needless to say, I was not in any way persuaded to believe that I should spend what one producer insists ought be more than $7 per cup for specialty coffee. Furthermore, I actually don´t care if people who want me to pay more than $7 for a small cup of dilute light-roasted coffee think that I am a philistine. I know what I like. The syrupy expresso produced by a scrappy-looking Japanese fellow in a very dirty cap looked okay to me, but that was about it. I am not entirely sure why that segment was included, given that he was essentially contradicting all of the other producers. He correctly pointed out that expresso is a drug. Yes, a potent dose of caffeine it does indeed provide.

The sociopolitical and economic story of coffee is a fascinating one, but it is barely touched upon here. I recommend Black Gold (2006) for an insightful documentary on the twentieth-century history of java. There is also a film entirely devoted to Baristas, Barista (2015), which tells the sad tale of the people who have attempted (and failed) to elevate coffee-making to a profession similar to that of the sommelier. A Film About Coffee is just some sort of marketing piece which attempts (vainly, see above) to persuade people that they should think of coffee more along the lines of wine, while offering up touching images of struggling coffee growers, as though by paying $7 a cup we are helping them, not the companies who underwrote this production.

As if coffee was not already overpriced when compared to other beverages, this film wants to make the argument that consumers should be paying more for that special cuppa. Will anyone buy the spiel that good coffee should be priced like fine wine? It would have been more interesting if the film delved into the reasons why coffee is a commodity whereas wine is usually individually priced. Instead the viewer is taken on a trip to see how labor intensive coffee production is and how much care must be taken from harvest to roasting to brewing in order to get a great cup of coffee. There was simply no insight into the dynamics of the coffee market. They did not even bother to explain why the coffee market crashed in 2000. In other words, you will learn nothing about coffee as an important commodity because the film maker did not intend to teach but only really wanted to indoctrinate the belief that people should pay more for gourmet coffee.

This whole movie feels like something funded by specialty coffee trade interest groups. Other than the people who want to revel in how snobby the world of specialty coffee can be, you should probably skip this one and spend your time on something else that offers actual substance.