Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry

In lieu of a literal fulfillment of the title’s promise, Dunn gives us a spiritual one, an aggressively poetic elegy to the pre-industrialized agrarian work/life ethic Berry made his most deeply felt cause.

Sticking mostly to one corner of the turf Berry has staked out, this unusual and quite beautiful documentary seeks to connect with him by getting to know the land and those who work it near the author's Kentucky home.

It’s a pleasure to spend 80 minutes in Mr. Berry’s company.

The documentary is too tepid to generate anything like excitement or outrage, and elicits admiration more for its intentions than for its execution.

Ultimately, Look & See seems to have many objectives, yet accomplishes none of them satisfactorily.

In its brief, 80-minute running time, Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry encompasses two different films, and neither one of them is, in fact, a portrait of the poet/novelist/farmer/activist Wendell Berry. Neither one of them, despite sincere intentions, is very good.

Here, as Berry warns, the imagination is limited by the camera. In a world in which I couldn’t buy Berry’s New Collected Poems, I might make an effort to see this again someday, with my eyes shut.