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.

Death in the Garden

Death in the Garden (La mort en ce jardin). Luis Buñuel, 1956.
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Edition screened: Eureka! Masters of Cinema Blu-ray #167, released 2017. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.

Summary: Killing of a python.

Details:
1) A python hangs in a tree at eye level, seen well in advance by the party and posing no particular threat. So of coarse Georges Marchal hacks it with his machete, 1:13:47-1:13:55. We soon learn that they intend to consume the snake when we see Marchal butchering it and explaining that it will be good eats, 1:14:11 - 1:14:25. While the killing and butchering could have been much more gruesome and violent, this poor snake absolutely was hacked to death in the making of the film.
2) The poor snake’s hacked-up carcass is tossed to the ground and forgotten while everyone joins in the panic about not being able to start a fire in the wet environment. Fire started, Michel Piccoli looks at the snake’s body to see it engulfed by fire ants and writhing as if alive, 1:15:27-1:15:35.

Death in the Garden is not the torrent of surrealist wit and challenges that denote Buñuel’s more famous films. It is more of a masculine adventure movie, typical of the mid-1950s in some ways but leaning toward the Wages of Fear echelon in quality and theme, and intentionally evoking that exact film occasionally. But Buñuel’s intellect and political acumen are evident, and there are several scenes that would hold their own against any of his color films. One of these is the horrifying image of the dead snake brought back to life by ants, which cuts abruptly to a nighttime scene of cars driving around Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile. This tourist fantasy scene grinds to a stop as though the film projector has broken, parallel to Charles Vanel realizing he never will reach Paris. Excellent. 
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