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.

Fårö Document 1979

Fårö Document 1979 (Fårödokument 1979). Ingmar Bergman, 1979.
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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 104 minutes.

Summary: Recurring animal slaughter

Details:
1) Typical fishing gore of removing hooks from gasping, dying fish, 51:35-52:26.
2) A long sequence of a gentle pig being murdered and butchered, 1:05:23-1:13:14. As with similar scenes in Italian film, the men involved in this ritual seem to enjoy it a little too much, with lots of chuckling and finger wiggling in heaps of entrails. (To easily skip all this, just jump ahead to the next chapter when you see nice piggie being led out of the barn. This will put you at the beginning of the ‘Seaweed Harvest’ sequence, with nothing missed.)
3) Typical domestic fish cleaning, 1:21:45-1:23:00.
4) Commercial salmon fishing showing life on board, followed by hauling in and gutting 1:40:55-1:41:51.

Fårö Document 1979 is on disc #11 of 30 in Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema (part of ‘Opening Night’), along with Fårö Document (1970) and two short films, Daniel (1967) and Karin’s Face (1984). 


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