Anyone used to the convenience of city living should feel a tad guilty expressing impatience with “Boone,” a loving portrait of a goat dairy farm in Jacksonville, Ore., from the photojournalist Christopher LaMarca. If you buy milk of any kind, it’s only fair to see what happens before it reaches the store.
Over 75 minutes, Mr. LaMarca’s documentary watches three farmers toil over feeding, milking, bottling, chopping wood, picking vegetables and tending to goats giving birth. Some of the most humane scenes show the farmers simply going about their lives, caring for a dying dog or dancing while cooking.
Even so, “Boone” is slightly monotonous, and familiarity may be one cause. Quite a few strong documentaries have already explored the decline of American rural traditions, including “Sweetgrass,” a near-abstract immersion in the sights and sounds of a Montana sheep drive, and “Peter and the Farm,” a harrowing character study.
There are also drawbacks to Mr. LaMarca’s noninterventionist approach. Although we hear a snippet of a news report and a brief discussion of how the enterprise can’t support both its needs and the farmers’, the film provides scant context for Boone Farm’s financial distress. When an end title card attributes the farm’s closing to “regulations preventing the sale of raw milk and cheese,” the film points an accusatory finger having never made a case.
Unmediated footage can be edited polemically, as in Frederick Wiseman’s films, but “Boone” seems resigned to sidelong glances, confident that merely observing farm life, including some spunky animals, is enough. BY BEN KENIGSBERG.
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