Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer. Bong Joon-ho, 2013.

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Edition screened: Lionsgate Blu-ray, released 2015. English language and other languages with unreliable subtitles. Runtime approximately 126 minutes.

Summary: At 46:00, a large dead fish is slit with an axe as a motivating act before a melee.

The Deeper You Dig

The Deeper You Dig. John and Zelda Adams, 2019.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2020. English language. Runtime approximately 95 minutes.

Summary: Recurring hallucinations of dead and dismembered animals.

Details:

1) A disemboweled coyote on the floor of the house, 33:30-33:57.

2) Dismembered animal parts arranged on a desert plate with focus on a mutilated snake, 47:53-48:37.

3) Rear half of a young deer, 55:10-55:16.

4) Partially decomposed crow, 1:06:36-1:06:45

5) A deer is dragged through the woods, 1:18:48 - 1:20:08, with interspersed dialogue.

6) Bloody deer, 1:23:37 - 1:23:42.

The Arrow Blu-ray release also includes The Hatred (John Law, 2018). 

The Cranes Are Flying

The Cranes Are Flying (Letyat zhuravli ). Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957.

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Edition screened: Criterion #146, released 2020. Russian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 96 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The Criterion BD of this perfect film includes several interview segments and Patrick Cazals’ 74-minute documentary Hurricane Kalatozov.

Wilczyca (The Wolf)

Wilczyca (The Wolf). Marek Piestrak, 1983.

😿 😿 😿

Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. Polish with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.

Summary: Graphic death of a dog.

Details:

1) The opening 20 seconds of the film show a raven pecking at meat on the head of a dead horse; not really the meat of the horse, more like some meat placed on the head of a dead horse.

2) Kacper finds and carries away his bloody dog that has been attacked by a wolf, 46:59 - 47:35. The dog appears to be genuinely wounded and dying, twitching and with tongue distended.

3) Kacper pursues and shoots at the wolf. We hear the wolf whimper after a gunshot at 1:1:49, then follow a trail of blood to see a bloody paw (and nothing more) at 1:20:18. 

The Wilczyca BD in the Severin box set also includes Lokis: A Manuscript of Professor Wittembach (1970, Janusz Majewski).

Szinbád

Szinbád. Zoltán Huszárik, 1971.

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Edition screened: Second Run DVD #058, released 2011. Hungarian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The Second Run DVD also includes Peter Strickland’s Szinbád: An Appreciation (2010, 12 minutes).

Mammals

Mammals (Ssaki). Roman Polanski, 1962.

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Edition screened: Included with Criterion DVD #215 Knife in the Water, released 2003. Scored; no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 10 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Khrustalyov, My Car!

Khrustalyov, My Car! (Khrustalyov, Mashinu!). Aleksey German, 1998.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2019. Russian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 148 minutes.

Summary: Rough handling of domestic animals, but no representations of those animals being injured.

Details:

1) At the beginning of the film, the teenage boy who likes 1950’s science and inventions has harnessed the family dog to the clothes line, as seen in a brief shot of the dog sailing through the cluttered apartment.

2) A large fish is stored in a bath tub, luring the cat to jump into the tub (off-screen). After the splash, the soaking white cat is scruffed and hand-squeegeed.

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.

The Shining

The Shining. Stanley Kubrick, 1980.

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Edition screened: Warner Blu-ray, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 144 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. John Hughes, 1987.

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Edition screened: Paramount DVD, released 2000. English language. Runtime approximately 93 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Trapped Alive

Trapped Alive. Leszek Burzynski, 1993.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 96 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The White Reindeer

The White Reindeer (Valkoinen peura). Erik Blomberg, 1952.

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Edition screened: Eureka! Masters of Cinema Blu-ray #203, released 2019. Finnish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 74 minutes.

Summary: Some rough handling of the reindeer typical of livestock herding culture, but nothing intentionally cruel or violent.

The Masters of Cinema release also includes the 1947 short film With the Reindeer. 

With the Reindeer

With the Reindeer (Porojen parissa). Erik Blomberg and Eino Mäkinen, 1947.

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Edition screened: Included with Eureka! Masters of Cinema Blu-ray #203 The White Reindeer, released 2019. Finnish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 7 minutes.

Summary: Some rough handling of the reindeer typical of livestock herding culture, but nothing intentionally cruel or violent.

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.  

13 Days in France

13 Days in France (13 jours en France). Claude Lelouch and François Reichenbach, 1968.

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Edition screened: Included on Disc 16 (Grenoble 1968, X Olympic Winter Games) in Criterion Blu-ray set #900 100 Years of Olympic Films 1912-2012, released 2017. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 112 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The Chill Factor

The Chill Factor. Christopher Webster, 1993.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 97 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The Chill Factor consists primarily of non-dramatic scenes of snowmobile riding, spiced with a few gory kills and implied incest. I did not dislike this movie nearly as much as I expected to.

Fårö Document 1979

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

😿😿😿

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). 

Horror Express

Horror Express. Eugenio Martin, 1972.

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Edition screened: Arrow Blu-ray, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 84 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Jack Frost

Jack Frost. Michael Cooney, 1996.

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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #148, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 89 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The New Land

The New Land (Nybyggarna). Jan Troell, 1972.

😿😿

Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #797 and packaged with The Emigrants #796, released 2016. Swedish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 202 minutes.

Summary: Animal slaughter.

Details:

1) Robert brings home a rabbit he has caught and killed, 7:26-7:31. (Not a graphic depiction.)

2) Both The New Land and The Emigrants have occasional scenes of fish butchering and cleaning. Most are typical kitchen action, but a particularly gory scene occurs here, 25:00-25:32.

3) An ox is murdered by blows to the head, then slit open as a means to warm a freezing child, 1:19:16-2:48:25.

4) Goose slaughter and butchering, 2:47:43-2:48:25.

Many themes are explored during six-and-a-half magnificent hours of these two films. One motif, if a viewer cares to notice, is that people’s fates can mirror their treatment of animals. The Emigrants introduces the grandest presentation of this idea early in the film when young Robert is appropriately guilt-ridden for the cruel drowning of his cat. Years later he remorses that the animal suffered and wonders if he can be forgiven. No, in fact. Robert suffers the rest of his life from excruciating nerve damage and recurrently endures the cruel fate of The Fool. Most overtly at the end of The New Land, we see a goose that has been butchered by a gash to the neck, and the next scene is a human-on-human attack in which a man is shot through the neck. He falls and grasps at the plucked goose feathers to try to stop the blood that gushes from his wound.

I do not think Troell intends a strong tit-for-tat message about animal cruelty. It is more just an aspect of very good writing, to help express the larger theme of human interaction in the larger world. Early in The Emigrants Robert has a small textbook about Natural History, given to him by an elder who explained that natural history contains all the wisdom that need be known. Robert reads to his family an example passage that limply explains how water, like wine and blood, cannot be grasped in the hands because those things are “wet”. The Swedish family and friends that we follow for 60-odd years across the Atlantic Ocean and most of North America never make much progress in understanding the natural world. 

The inability to work with nature, or the lack of flexibility to rebound from the blows nature deals us all, is their recurring downfall. Sometimes the incidents are beyond the family’s control and are appropriate reminders to us all: Despite years of body-crushing labor to remove massive stones from your field, you will break your delicate wooden plow on a barely-submerged boulder. Other times their stupidity and stubbornness is their own undoing, as with the continual pregnancies despite their poverty and warnings by a doctor of the mother’s fragility.