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.

Sátántangó

Sátántangó. Béla Tarr, 1994.

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Edition screened: Arbelos Blu-ray, released 2020. Hungarian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 439 minutes.


Summary: Realtime death of a cat by poisoning.


The seven-hour and twenty-minute film is presented on two Blu-ray discs.

Disc 1 presents Part I (137 minutes) and Part II (125 minutes). Disc 2 presents Part III (178 minutes).


The famous 16-minute cat-killing scene takes place in Disc 1, Part II.  It begins with mild inappropriate handling by the young girl at 45:00 (shaking, rough handling) then accelerates into a long scene of the girl rolling aggressively on the floor with the cat as though they are struggling. The cat actor does not dig this, growling and ears flat. The cat then is retained in a suspended net while rat poison is added to milk, which the girl makes the cat drink by forcing its mouth into the bowl. We see the cat near death, barely moving, with her head in her bowl concluding at 1:01:17. The girl lugs the dead cat around through her remaining scenes in Part II (concluding at 1:18:59). Part III begins with the girl’s funeral.


There is much discussion about whether this cruelty in fact resulted in the cat’s death or if an on-set veterinarian revived the animal off-screen at the last minute. As always, my position is that even presenting these images, these ideas, to our cruel society is reprehensible. The game of Lie Or Truth allows some people unacceptable smug justification if the depiction turns out to be a Lie. And in any case the girl carries around a clearly-dead real cat for twenty minutes.


This scene is long and excruciating but is not as upsetting or graphic as many of the murdered-pet scenes common in pop-style movies of the late 20th-century. There is no blood, no shocking closeup, no horrifying moment of discovery. The scene consists mostly of the one-sided wrestling match of the girl holding the cat roughly while rolling around on the floor. Viewers of pop movies typically take animal murder in stride, understanding it as a plot device inevitably intended to warn or threaten some straying spouse or unwanted neighbor that he or she could be next. And these scenes usually are fast: a one-second shot of a grimacing strangled cat and we're done. Béla Tarr satisfies neither of these criteria, offers no release valve. No easily summarized aspect of plot is advanced, and viewers unfamiliar with films like Sátántangó do not know that opening a can of beans or walking from one room to the next also often requires ten or twenty minutes film time.


Cat-killing scene aside, every moment of this movie is beautiful. Just skip the 16 minutes as outlined above, thus removing ethical stress and a little screening time in one fell swoop, especially if you share my interest in swoops, fell or otherwise. Why is the cat killed?  Because destroying the single nice thing in her world is the only influence the depressed young girl can exert in her bleak life. It is a desperate and misguided expression of self in an oppressive environment. Feel free to skip this section of Part II and enjoy the rest of this otherwise bright and cheery film.


**Please note, if you’re watching this film as a single file instead of across two discs on the blu-ray release, then the animal cruelty commences around 2 hrs 56 mins.


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