ON SCREEN: Into the Weeds: Dewayne “Lee” Johnson vs. Monsanto Company
Where: Cinecenta (University of Victoria), 3800 Finnerty Rd.
When: June 12-18, 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. nightly
Tickets: $9 ($7 for students, seniors, and children)
Note: Writer-director Jennifer Baichwal will attend a Q&A session following the 4:30 p.m. screening on Sunday
Few storylines rouse our collective spirits like a hearty David vs. Goliath battle, especially when there’s a victory for humankind at the closing credits.
By that measure, Into the Weeds: Dewayne “Lee” Johnson vs. Monsanto Company should be a crowd-pleaser on par with anything from Steven Spielberg. The latest documentary by writer-director Jennifer Baichwal — about a multinational agrochemical corporation, a cancer-causing herbicide, and lawsuits resulting in a reported $16 billion in damages — will have viewers hanging on every frame.
“It is possible for David to beat Goliath sometimes,” Baichwal, who was raised in Victoria and graduated from the University of Victoria, said from her home in Toronto. “It’s something to be proud of.”
Into the Weeds is focused on the life of Johnson, a groundskeeper in Benicia, California, and his lawsuit against the former Monsanto Company. Johnson was awarded $289 million in damages when it discovered that his non-Hodgkin lymphoma was directly related to Monsanto’s best-known product, Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide he used extensively as a school groundskeeper.
Johnson is not the only plaintiff featured in the film, and the film covers a variety of issues tied to three landmark court cases, including millions of pages of “dumped” internal documents, according to Baichwal. Into the Weeds also pulls back the curtain on corporate malfeasance and mass torts, a type of lawsuit where numerous plaintiffs treated as a group of individuals take legal action against a single defendant, generally a large company or organization. In effect, David vs. Goliath.
“I wanted this film to be a historical record of a moment that really happened, and I wanted it to be something that could stand into the future,” Baichwal said. “It’s an awareness-raiser, let’s put it that way.”
Baichwal produced the film with her husband, Nicholas de Pencier, with whom she has made some of her most acclaimed films, Manufactured Landscapes (2006), Watermark (2013). and Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2018). By comparison, she said Into the Weeds was a much more difficult shoot.
It took several years complete, largely due to the potential for legal ramifications. A documentary about a multinational parent company (Bayer AG) which has faced more than 120,000 legal claims alleging its glyphosate-based herbicides cause cancer is not to be made without measured steps.
“Every legal claim in the film was a claim made in court with evidence to be backed up,” Baichwal said. “It was gone through line by line with lawyers, in order to make sure we weren’t offside or sloppy. There’s no Michael Moore in this. There are no grand pronouncements. It is all backed up.”
Bayer AG has publicly stated it has earmarked $16 billion to cover litigation liability associated with the lawsuits. Johnson eventually had his awarded amount cut from $289 million to $78 million; it was further reduced to $20.5 million after appeal, funds which he received in 2020. Thousands of plaintiffs have made similar claims.
Johnson is a riveting character, his skin ravaged by the effects of cancer, and his easygoing nature is key to the success of Into the Weeds. Baichwal does not limit her focus, however. Farmers who unwittingly used Roundup — a product originally meant to strip material from industrial boilers — are also key to the issue’s wider impact. “Farmers in our film are not the enemy,” she said. “They are between a rock and a hard place.”
There are alternative models available, but multi-billion dollar companies do not generally see organic farming, permaculture, and regenerative farming as viable options. One major problem remains: As a weed killer, Roundup is amazingly effective. The product, in its current form, is expected to be off store shelves by 2023, but will remain in use by commercial farmers.
That has longer-lasting implications — for obvious reasons, Baichwal said. Roundup will continue to be manufactured and sold to consumers, but with new ingredients. “Even though it’s a partial victory, in terms of removing glyphosate from the residential formula of Roundup, it’s still a victory.”
Many governments have banned Roundup from being used in public areas, although that is rarely enforced. Humankind loves its green grass, red apples, and yellow bananas. And those colours are only able to pop, in public parks and produce areas at grocery stores, with the aid of weed killers.
Into the Weeds doesn’t solve the problem set out before us. But it gives audiences an abundance of food for thought.
“When you look at all of our films, I’ve always been resistant to easy resolutions or reductions or generalizations,” Baichawal said. “Reality is complex and messy. I would rather show things as they are.”
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