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This provocative documentary, clearly intended to provide vegetarian and vegan individuals with weapons to shame their meat-eating family members during holiday meals such as Easter and Passover, makes a case for the theory that Jesus was a vegetarian. However, despite the filmmaker’s passionate efforts, the argument presented is not convincing. The main source of this theory is the apocryphal Gospel of the Ebionites, a text that has existed since the second century. Director Kip Andersen attempts to make this discovery seem groundbreaking, resulting in a comical and eccentric quest. The documentary concludes by introducing us to a vegan Buddhist monk named Mateo Richard, whom scientists have deemed the “happiest human on Earth”. He spends most of his time meditating on compassion and has exhibited “high-amplitude gamma activity” in his brain, indicating the highest level of brain activity.
This particular mishmash of pseudoscientific buzz words is delivered via a montage of rostrum shots showing visually highlighted bits of text while an awestruck voiceover from Andersen himself synthesises the ideas. Before we can even absorb this information, the film skittishly moves on to the next notion that all the greatest thinkers in history were vegetarian. Leonardo da Vinci supposedly bought up all the chickens in his local market and then released them into the woods, which would have made the local foxes happy if no one else.
The entire film portrays a continuous stream of claims about well-known deceased individuals without much supporting evidence, combined with a lack of knowledge and understanding. In one particular scene, Andersen and co-director Kameron Waters express genuine surprise when they discover that many Christian ministers they interview, particularly from the Southern Baptist Convention, actively oppose vegetarianism. They speculate that this may be influenced by financial support from the agricultural industry and Christian businesses like Chick-fil-A and In-N-Out Burger. They also learn that following kosher and halal practices does not eliminate animal suffering. This information comes as a surprise to them.
Fortunately, Andersen and Waters journey via a map from the United States to Israel, Oxford, and India in order to gather additional information from previous employees of slaughterhouses, theologians, historians, animal rights advocates, and George Monbiot from The Guardian; the latter making logical and reasonable statements about the connection between the meat industry and the current climate crisis. However, apart from him and a handful of other rational contributors who may not have been fully aware of their involvement, the rest of the content is nonsense, although still entertaining.
Source: theguardian.com
