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.

The Passion of Anna

The Passion of Anna (En passion). Ingmar Bergman, 1969.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray set Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, released 2018. Swedish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 101 minutes.

 Summary: Sub-plot of animal murders and cruelty.

Details:
1) Max von Sydow finds and rescues a puppy who has been hanged by his neck and left for dead, 15:20-15:35. He take the puppy home, and the puppy is fine.
2) We are amidst the bodies of a nearly a dozen sheep who have been murdered and mutilated, 50:17-51:44. The scene ends with the sheep being pulled into a mass grave.
3) Ullmann and von Sydow find an unconscious young bird at 1:07:04. They decide to euthanize it. Von Sydow smashes its head with a small rock off screen, and we see Ullmann bury it. Through 1:07:55 they are washing blood off their hands and sharing remorse.
4) At 1:35:05 a barn is on fire. We hear animals crying out and it is explained that gasoline had been poured over a horse before the fire was set. We have a 1-second shot of the dead horse at 1:35:16, and again as it is pulled up a ramp, 1:36:04.

The Passion of Anna is on disc #10 of 30 in Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema (part of ‘Centerpiece 1’), along with Shame.
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