La vie moderne

while this installment of the series does indeed provide some very beautiful shots of rural France and the people who are farming it, it fails on several levels.

it fails to tell the story of the farmers it's following. unless you believe that sitting around a table in an uncomfortable silence responding to excruciatingly slowly delivered, simplistic questions is a true slice of their lives.

it fails to tell a story at all, barely scratching at the surface of the problems faced by these farmers using traditional methods.

it seems more a vehicle for the filmmaker to proudly tell us repeatedly how well he knows these folks (which is not borne out by the reactions of the farmers to him or his questions), while feeding us sorrowful questions about death in preparation for the mournful, cello-stoked, backwards-view-of-life ending.