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.

Andrei Rublev

Andrei Rublev (Andrey Rublev). Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #34, released 2018. Russian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 183 minutes.

Summary: Primitive brutality to animals.

Details:
1) We hear a dog howling as he is beaten to death below screen, 42:56-43:06, then see his body in the snow, through 43:14.
2) A dead and mauled goose, 48:02-48:16.
3) A trapped cow on fire during a battle, 1:45:50-1:46:05.
4) Long shot of an injured horse being killed, 1:50:08-1:50:15.
5) A horse with a broken leg falls down a flight of stairs, 1:52:51-1:53:11. We see him again at 1:53:25 unable to stand, then impaled through the throat, 1:53:35.

The Criterion BD also includes Tarkovsky’s 1960 family film The Steamroller and the Violin, as well as the original 205-minute cut of Andrei Rublev, The Passion According to Andrei, in which the cow and horse scenes mentioned above are slightly longer and more violent.  
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