Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman is a straightforward documentary with didactic intentions and a feel-good sentiment as its foundation. It wants the viewer—and its ideal viewer is a child—to come away cheered, both about (vaguely) the human spirit and (specifically) the U.S. and what it stands for. The film meets these modest goals with aplomb, but it rarely exceeds them to prompt critical thought or stretch its own narrow boundaries of form and intent.
Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman consists of three equal-length chapters, each detailing the story of a committed individual who is working diligently within the democratic process to foster structural change towards ecological preservation. The first chapter follows a Montana rancher who partners with his neighbors to get legislation passed protecting a long stretch of the Rocky Mountain front. The second details the struggles of a Kansas wheat farmer pushing his colleagues to adopt no-till farming methods to reduce soil erosion. The final section of the film traces (you guessed it!) a fisherman pushing for stricter federal regulation of red snapper fishing in the Gulf of Mexico in order to stabilize the population.
The film is narrated by Tom Brokaw, but his script is limited to the prologue, epilogue and transitions from section to section. The majority of Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman consists of interviews with the principal characters and beautiful nature cinematography. The photography, primarily aerially-shot, is particularly stunning in the Montana chapter, but also captures stunning views of horticulture on the Great Plains and hundred-mile vistas of blue ocean.
The underlying message of Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman is certainly hackneyed, but it is the sort of moral that can still inspire. It is a tale of individuals joining together and working to improve their daily world. Each of the film’s heroes bucked tradition and accepted wisdom to pursue his own path. There is no deeper analysis presented and the film is definitely old-fashioned in its disregard for intersectionality and diversity (all three heroes are white men and at least two are straight, as well). Even with these necessary criticisms noted, the trilogy of stories, especially the rancher one, have some real rhetorical power. Namely, the film argues that change is possible and can be created by anyone willing to work for it.
There is an edge to the implicit arguments posited throughout the film, as well, pushing beyond the banality of the more overt claims. Specifically, each of the three characters identifies himself as a small-government advocate and comfortable conservative. Each lives in a red state and works a characteristic red-state job. Yet the Montana and Gulf of Mexico heroes mobilize federal government forces to intervene for good. The Kansas farmer, while not pushing for regulatory change, does display the sort of bone-deep trust in biological and environmental science that the average U.S. citizen does not normally assign to a Republican. In all three stories, communities of like-minded individuals band together, working as groups rather than isolated, rugged individuals. Taken as a whole, this is a robust argument for humanizing the average red state manual laborer by showing that even they are genuine, kind, capable of collective action, open-minded, guided by science and have goodwill for their neighbors.
Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman can be alienating for more demanding film viewers, both with its rigidly conventional storytelling style and its trite thesis. It disregards minorities entirely and is certainly on too-friendly terms with neoliberalism. By far the most cloying and irritating element in the film is the ludicrous, over-the-top prologue, replete with a pretentious script, faux-dramatic cinematography and a massive, swelling score. With the target audience of the film being children, the grandiose opening number seems meant to signal to these young viewers that the coming content is serious and important. But it is definitely an unfortunate opening few minutes for adults.
Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman is not a novel film in any sense, but it is still worthwhile to viewers concerned with food production, small-scale efforts to lessen humanity’s ecological footprint and the role of government in fomenting positive change. And for teachers: each 30-minute chapter could be watched individually over the course of a middle-school school year.
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