Why We Farm / Maine Seasons Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		2.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

Why We Farm / Maine Seasons Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown March 12, 2024

I'm baffled, so help me solve a mystery. No kidnappings. No grand larceny. No murders. Hopefully simpler. Kinder. Even gentler. Here goes: how and why is this 3D double feature release consistently, and I mean consistently as in the last three months at least, been sitting pretty above almost every other film in my queue of titles to review? Practically, I know it's because it ranks just as high on Amazon's Blu-ray sales chart. That's the only way we know how to best prioritize older titles for review; sales rank and consumer demand. But why this specific title, though? What power does it hold? What sway does it have over the physical media demographic? It's possibly one of the least provocative, most harmless BDs I've ever written about. So what is it that keeps people adding it to their Amazon cart? The 3D? A deep curiosity about farm life? A fascination with the coasts of Maine? What causes our algorithm to continually suggest I give it a spin? Confused yet? Cause I sure am. To say nothing yet of the two features included -- Why We Farm and Maine Seasons -- it's a mystery that was really, truly, genuinely starting to bug me. So I decided to finally give in, add it to my own cart and, indeed, check this 3D duo out for myself. And after two hours of short films, trailers and bonus content I'm... just as baffled as when I started.

Why We Farm (2D/3D/Anaglyph, 16 minutes) introduces and briefly follows three elderly, female New England farmers who seem more than happy to chat about their passion and the particulars of everything from goat raising to horse rearing. How long has farming been in their families? How much do they enjoy what they do? And what motivates them to continue farming, even as it becomes more difficult in the modern age? The bigger draw, however, is Maine Seasons (2D/3D, 44 minutes), a much longer but much more serene, music-backed, narration-free selection of scenes showcasing the natural landscapes and local seaside towns of the Pine Tree State in spring, summer, fall and winter. Essentially it's no more and no less than what its title claims, serving more as a meditative piece than anything more substantial.

With each one viewed, my private little mystery could at long last be solved, right? Nooope. Why We Farm is... fine. It's much too short, limited in scale, and merely explores a handful of the many varieties of farming. The women are all lovely people; kind and bemused to be the subject of an interview. But it all seems a bit too on the fly, with the farmers offering the basics and some sweet, wholesomely quaint stories about their lifelong pursuit, though rarely digging any deeper than the details that sit immediately atop their minds. And then it's suddenly over. Credits rolling. All stop. Why We Farm is the simplest of investigations into a legitimately intriguing question, leaving most topics off the table, swapped out for cute shots of animals grazing, chewing and chowing down.

Maine Seasons is much more effective, but only because it doesn't present itself as a documentary. It's the sort of soothing montage of calendar-esque vignettes you'd see playing on a TV in a yoga studio, at a dentist's office or a real estate agent's waiting room. Which isn't bad, just a very unassuming, uninformative series of pretty pictures set to music and little else. Still, the primary presentation is 3D, and who would sit at home, 3D glasses on, popcorn in hand, eager to watch... a 45-minute video you'd catch at a nail salon. It's a strange merging of 3D and airy, lightweight imagery, but lacks the narrative push and documentary angle that might bump it up to the sort of film you'd find playing on loop at a local Maine tourist stop just off the highway.

Paired together, there's not much here to unite the two. Even incorporating the bonus mini-docs and short films also included on the disc, it's hard to identify any connection. Perhaps homely Americana? Whatever it is, it doesn't solve my mystery. Which leaves me with only one conclusion, Amazon has fallen in the first attack of our coming AI overlords. The machines that operate our site are dead or dying. The rule of the Almighty Algorithm is shattered. Hope is lost. Woe, woe to mankind. We mortals will soon be left with nothing more than the encroaching wasteland destined to replace society when the dark lord Google rises and we're forced to battle to the bloody end for food, water and shelter. Who knew it would begin here, with Why We Farm and Maine Seasons? All hail ye eld Apple, Sister Demon Queen of the Splintered Old World. May we bask in Her dreadful presence till death brings relief to us all.

Why We Farm / Maine Seasons Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

There's not much to say about the film's 1080p/AVC-encoded video presentation, regardless of whether you view it in 2D or 3D. The entirety of the image appears to be the quality of an upscaled DVD, with rampant artifacting, banding, standard definition-esque clarity and detail, errant noise and other anomalies that make for an unattractive Blu-ray. The 3D is reasonably effective considering the various types of shots on display, but there often comes a loss of depth and dimensionality when the foreground, midground and background elements aren't as cleanly separated from one another. The 3D flattens fairly often as a result, though the culprit appears to be the photography itself rather than an issue with the encoding. But again, I noticed more artifacts, stair-stepping, moire patterns, and pixelated edges than convincing 3D elements popping off the screen.

Why We Farm / Maine Seasons Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

In place of lossless audio (which wouldn't help matters anyway), Variety provides a capable 448kbps Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track. Why We Farm is hounded by air noise, wind and the sort of vocal fidelity you'd expect from interviews conducted outside near farm animals, but it actually suits the tone of the documentary, embracing the quaint nature of it all and not trying to fashion a rousing sonic experience out of a down-home series of interviews and cute creature shots. Maine Seasons offers a very different experience focused more on music, but its audio equally suits the tone of the piece. There isn't much in the way of LFE support or rear speaker activity, though both are engaged, but the subdued, soothing films really don't offer scenes that would take advantage of either. All told, the disc's audio is serviceable. You won't need much more than that.

Why We Farm / Maine Seasons Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

What do we get for extras? Quite a bit actually, clocking in at just shy of an hour's worth of content. There isn't a special features menu, though, meaning the extras play, one after another, after the feature films run their course. It's a slight inconvenience but it wasn't that hard to move from extra to extra to see what was on tap.

• 100 Years of 3D Movies Blu-ray Trailer

• 3D Town/New Hampshire Seasons Blu-ray Trailer

• Original Maine Seasons Trailer

• Original Why We Farm Trailer (2D Only)

• Three Bonus Shorts - "Kittery," "Antiquing" and "Car Show."

• Standalone Footage - "Thistle Dew", "Hidden Pond" and "Sugarbush."

Why We Farm / Maine Seasons Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Ahem. Dark gods? Demons rising? Ha ha! Ha ha... ha! Um, ha. Twas all a joke. I didn't believe it for a second. Anyway, the mystery remains unsolved. Perhaps there's just a demand for 3D so great that Amazon's rankings are as baffled as I am. Either way, there isn't much here to justify a purchase other than a deep, deep need for 3D content. With a middling video presentation and a merely decent audio track, this one comes up short.