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.

Weekend (Godard)

Weekend (Week end). Jean-Luc Godard, 1967.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #635, released 2012. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.

Summary: Butchering of various animals.

Details:
1) At 1:20:25 begins a 25-second shot of a woman carrying a skinned rabbit by its feet. This is cued by the dialogue: “Where are you going?” “To get a rabbit from Mr. Flaubert.”  Murder of the woman causes the rabbit to be dropped, and from 1:20:50 to 1:21:24 is a close-up of the rabbit’s skinned head as it is repeatedly washed over with blood. This sequence is relentless and visually intense.
2) At 1:32:23 begins a 30-second montage of a butcher in the forest slaughtering a pig and a goose. The killings are real and moderately graphic. The scene is neither prolonged nor gratuitously gory as in 1900 or Salon Kitty, but is an unexpected shock, cued by the intertitle card, ‘Massacre de Septembre’. 
3) The revolutionaries exit a small boat at 1:33:48, carrying more dead animals, and take them to the butcher who is still working with the pig. This is over at 1:34:50.
4) At 1:42:29 we return to the butcher who now is cooking and serving meat, with some of the dead animals lying about. The film ends very soon thereafter.

Godard designed the final 10 minutes of Weekend to be completely different from the opening 92 minutes. The first 1½ hours are a witty and visually dynamic romp through historical allegory, political satire, and domestic bickering. The housewife’s skinned rabbit serves as a transition, for the image begins as a gory but normal part of French culinary life and quickly becomes something inexplicably graphic and violent. The repeated dousing of the rabbit with blood signals the tone and content of the final 10 minutes. After the intertitle card ‘Massacre de Septembre’ the remainder of the film focuses on a band of symbolic young revolutionaries and their acts of violence and terroristic drumming. While the content and style of the ending combine to form an elite sociopolitical statement as only Godard can make, it is a tedious viewing experience compared to the literary underpinnings and visual wit of the bulk of the film.

In truth, the butcherings post-September Massacre aren’t as gruesome as the blood-soaked rabbit around 1:21, and you may find it valuable to watch Godard’s ending at least once. I look forward to future viewings of this film, but will allow myself to stop around 1:20 if the change of tone prompts no interest.

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