At Any Price

Film (2012)

With Zac Efron (Dean Whipple), Dennis Quaid (Henry Whipple), Heather Graham (Meredith Crown), Clancy Brown (Jim Johnson), Ben Marten (Brad Johnson), Kim Dickens (Irene Whipple), Chelcie Ross (Byron), Red West (Cliff Whipple), Maika Monroe (Cadence Farrow)

In corn country, Iowa, agribusiness is controlled by seed companies that license genetically modified versions of their products and control their distribution. Henry Whipple is the owner of a large farm and operates as an agent for the dominant seed company which seeks to promote its influence. Henry has taken over the farm from his father, Cliff (Red West), and hopes to bring his own sons, one of whom is Dean (Zac Efron), into the effort. But Dean resents his father’s expectations and has completely other aspirations – to be a race car driver.

In Robert Kenner’s excellent documentary, Food, Inc.(2008), there was a section devoted to the relationship of agribusiness to soy and corn farming in the Midwest, pointing out the close connection between genetically modified strains of seed and the use of certain kinds of weed killers. The way in which seed companies were shown to manipulate the marketing and distribution of their product, and to control the lives and practices of farmers, was made readily apparent.

In dramatic form, At Any Price, effectively exhibits the toll of such practices on individuals, families and communities in the world of farming.

In a brash and dandified way, Dennis Quaid, as Henry, beautifully exemplifies the agribusiness mindset. Driven by his own father to succeed, Henry is like a grinning windup toy who seduces and persuades with every twist and bend. Competition with his chief business rival, Jim Johnson (Clancy Brown), fuels his own ambition. The sons of the two men enter the fray, competing even more ferociously than their aggressive, but businesslike, fathers.

This is a dark, moral tale without heroes. Its protagonist, in Quaid’s able hands, is a tragic clown. If anything, the audience’s growing awareness of the sad consequences of greed is the conquering hero.

Zac Efron is moody and steely enough to play his role as a defiant child who tries to break out of the mold of expectations.

Kim Dickens (Irene Whipple) has a translucent glow to her expression, which makes her effective as a moral ballast even when she is wordless. In the end, that quality gets subverted and it is highly disconcerting, however believable.

Heather Graham (Meredith Crown) has an episodic role as a slutty presence in the lives of Henry and Dean and carries off her lack of restraint with sultry vampiness.

As Cadence Farrow, Maika Monroe is a real eye-opener. She has a spunkily earnest role that, again, presses against the edge of the believable, but she does a good job nonetheless.

The dilemma of modern industrialized farming is thrown here into tragic relief. The newly efficient mechanisms of money, opportunity and greed interact with the old traditions of family alignment and paternal expectation in particularly unsettling ways. The heartlessness of agri-monopoly contrasts with the full-heartedness of family and traditional farming friendships, to make for a sad and sorry hybrid, a corn stalk with a broken ear.