Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
★★½ — Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
There is a corner of American independent documentary filmmaking from the late 1970s and early 1980s that operates almost entirely outside the concerns of mainstream cinema. No stars, no spectacle, no obvious commercial hook. Just a camera, a subject someone finds genuinely fascinating, and enough patience to let things unfold at their own pace. Les Blank worked squarely in that tradition. A Louisiana-born filmmaker who spent decades capturing folk musicians, food cultures, and the kind of vivid, unglamorous American life that Hollywood rarely bothered to notice, Blank built a quiet but devoted following among cinephiles who valued curiosity over polish. His films are rarely easy to categorise, sitting somewhere between ethnography and affectionate portrait, and Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (the title itself lifted from a proverb) is as good an example of his approach as any.
Released in 1980 and produced through Flower Films, the small independent outfit with which Blank worked throughout his career, the film runs just over fifty minutes and was shot largely in and around California's garlic-growing heartland. Blank had already made films about Cajun music, zydeco culture, and Werner Herzog (who, in a neat bit of trivia, appears here in the cast), so turning his lens on the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival and the broader community of growers, cooks, and enthusiasts who gathered around it was entirely in keeping with his instinct for subjects that are, on the surface, niche, but in practice reveal something warmer and wider about the people involved. The film has since been preserved by the Academy Film Archive, a recognition that work this low-key can still carry genuine cultural value. Among the faces on screen is Alice Waters, the chef and restaurateur behind Berkeley's Chez Panisse, who by 1980 was already a significant figure in the emerging Californian food movement. Her presence gives the film a grounding in serious culinary thinking, even as Blank keeps the overall mood loose and celebratory. If you enjoy documentary filmmaking that lets its subjects breathe, you might also find something to appreciate in Nom Tèw or the rather different but equally food-adjacent pleasures of Candomblé in Togo, another documentary from this site's archive that finds meaning in cultural ritual and communal life.
For viewers coming to Blank's work for the first time, it is worth knowing what you are signing up for. This is not a tightly argued, talking-heads documentary in the mould of what became standard television fare through the 1980s and 1990s. It is observational, episodic, and openly affectionate toward its subject. The soundtrack, drawn from folk and roots music, is as much a part of the film's texture as the images themselves, and the cinematography has that warm, slightly grainy quality of 16mm work that suits the county-fair atmosphere perfectly. Whether that approach wins you over or tests your patience is rather the question at the heart of any honest assessment, and it is one that Macca addresses head-on below. For broader context on what the 1980s independent and documentary landscape was producing, it is also worth a look at some of his other reviews from the decade, including Sugar Cane Alley and Next Goal Wins, the latter a more recent documentary that shows how the form has evolved since Blank's era.
Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980), directed by Les Blank, is a charming, low-key documentary that treats its humble subject (garlic) with the kind of reverence usually reserved for fine wine or ancient artefacts. Filmed at garlic festivals, farmers’ markets, and kitchen tables across California, it blends folklore, culinary passion, and offbeat Americana into a warm, meandering portrait of a pungent bulb and the people who adore it. There’s genuine affection in every frame: close-ups of cloves being peeled, chefs extolling garlic’s virtues, and eccentric growers proudly displaying their heirloom strains. It’s informative, often funny, and surprisingly personal, less a food doc, more a love letter to a shared cultural quirk. Blank’s fly-on-the-wall style captures the joy and eccentricity of garlic enthusiasts without irony or condescension. The soundtrack (folksy, upbeat, and peppered with accordion) adds to the homespun vibe, and the film’s sun-drenched visuals evoke a simpler, earthier time. You come away not just knowing more about garlic, but feeling like you’ve spent an afternoon at a county fair with a group of wonderfully odd, garlic-breathed friends. But let’s be honest: it’s still a documentary about garlic. And while that’s part of its quirky appeal, the runtime (just over an hour) feels stretched. Some segments repeat points already made, and the loose, episodic structure (while intentional) lacks momentum. By the final festival montage, even the most devoted foodie might wonder if we really needed another five minutes of garlic braiding. Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers is a pleasant, affectionate oddity. Fun, flavorful, and full of character. But like a dish overloaded with alliums, it eventually overwhelms its own modest premise. Enjoyable in small doses, but not quite substantial enough to justify its length. A tasty appetiser, not a main course.
And that final image, the appetiser rather than the main course, is one I keep coming back to. There is real warmth here, and I would not discourage anyone from spending an hour with it, particularly if you have any feeling for American folk culture or the kind of obsessive enthusiasm that makes county fairs such odd, joyful places. But I do think Blank's instinct to simply keep rolling, admirable in principle, works against him in a film this short. When you have under an hour, every segment needs to carry its weight, and a few here are doing rather less than that. Still, it sits comfortably in the tradition of documentaries that succeed on personality and passion alone, even when the argument runs thin. Films like this remind you that someone cared enough to point a camera at something the rest of the world walked past. That counts for something. Just maybe not quite enough for seconds.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 1980 | Watched: 2026-05-12
Trailer
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Angst (1983)
More documentary: Letter from Siberia (1957) · Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Style Wars (1983) · Here and Elsewhere (1976)
