Heads Up, Ears Down

This blog accurately identifies depictions of violence and cruelty toward animals in films. The purpose is to provide viewers with a reliable guide so that such depictions do not come as unwelcome surprises. Films will be accurately notated, providing a time cue for each incident along with a concise description of the scene and perhaps relevant context surrounding the incident. In order to serve as a useful reference tool, films having no depictions of violence to animals will be included, with an indication that there are no such scenes. This is confirmation that the films have been watched with the stated purpose in mind.


Note that the word depictions figures prominently in the objective. It is a travesty that discussions about cruelty in film usually are derailed by the largely unrelated assertion that no animals really were hurt (true only in some films, dependent upon many factors), and that all this concern is just over a simulation. Not the point, whether true or false. We do not smugly dismiss depictions of five-year-olds being raped because those scenes are only simulations. No, we are appalled that such images are even staged, and we are appropriately horrified that the notion now has been planted into the minds of the weak and cruel.


Depictions of violence or harm to animals are assessed in keeping with our dominant culture, with physical abuse, harmful neglect, and similar mistreatment serving as a base line. This blog does not address extended issues of animal welfare, and as such does not identify scenes of people eating meat or mules pulling plows. The goal is to itemize images that might cause a disturbance in a compassionate household.


These notes provide a heads-up but do not necessarily discourage watching a film because of depicted cruelty. Consuming a piece of art does not make you a supporter of the ideas presented. Your ethical self is created by your public rhetoric and your private actions, not by your willingness to sit through a filmed act of violence.

Fantastic Planet

Fantastic Planet (La Planete sauvage). René Laloux, 1973.
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Edition screened: Eureka! Masters of Cinema Blu-ray #006, released 2006. French language with English subtitles, or alternate English audio track. Runtime approximately 72 minutes.

Summary: Animated depictions of fantasy animals hurting or killing other fantasy animals.

The art style of Fantastic Planet is lovely and I can’t argue with the didactic themes. But the indebtedness to fantastic creatures popularized five years earlier in Yellow Submarine compromises Laloux’s work. Laloux was an accomplished animator by the time he made Fantastic Planet and surely could have conceived psychedelic beasts that were not visually interchangeable with Countdown Clowns, Snapping-Turtle Turks, and the Vacuum Cleaner Monster. Most distracting is the huge blue hand that comes from above to oppress with its extended index finger. … I’ve told you before, Oh! You can’t do that! Not in 1973 at least.

Masters of Cinema also gives us five Laloux animated shorts on the disc:
Dead Times (1965)
The Snails (1966)
The Captive (1988)

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