Know Your Mushrooms

Directed by: Ron Mann

Review by: Roberto Azula

In this tripped out yet educational documentary, Know Your Mushrooms is a fascinating sojourn into the bizarre world of mushrooms.  I have to give a full disclosure here, so I’d advise you to take this review with a grain of salt, preferably sprinkled over your favorite kind of mushrooms.  I was a bit “under the influence,” to put it mildly, but in my defense, I wasn’t on mushrooms, so I believe I can give a somewhat impartial review and analysis.

Know Your Mushrooms is a very strangely presented documentary, accompanied with heavily distorted psychedelic guitars (courtesy of Flaming Lips).  The film follows mycologists and veteran mushroom hunters/connesiuers Gary Lincoff and Larry Evans as they reveal the astonishing variety and potential of fungi.  Not only is the world’s largest organism a fungi, but a complex network of fungi are actually holding up the world’s crust and ensuring soil replenishment.  Oyster mushrooms have been used to clean up oil spills, and cancer researchers are just starting to uncover the mushroom’s anti-carcinogenic qualities.

The film eventually ends up at the Telluride Mushroom Festival, a three-day mushroom bacchanal that features some of the most delicious mushrooms in the world.  I also learned the sad truth that most mushrooms sold in supermarkets are of a grossly inferior kind, and that larger white mushrooms are often fraudulently sold as portobellos.  Naturally, a portion of this film is dedicated to the psilocybin mushrooms, but I found the normal mushrooms just as bizarre as their psychedelic cousins.  Highly recommended.