Hybrid Movie Review

Maize. We call it corn. For Milford Beeghly, he called it life. The so-called "corn king" was a pioneer in developing hybridized seed corn, and this quirky documentary gives us a strange look at his life and work, like it or not. Seen in archive footage and modern-day interviews that are artificially aged to match, we see what life as a farmer/scientist in the 1930s was like. Imagine David Lynch tackling this subject and you should have a vague idea of what director Monteith McCollum pulls off. Unfortunately, what he's not able to do is make Hybrid much more interesting, topically speaking, than an encyclopedia entry. The intrigue is all in the filmmaking, which is only half the puzzle. I ended up much more fascinated with certain camera tricks that McCollum performs than with anything about the man in the movie.