Gunda (2020)

Directed by: Viktor Kosakovskiy | 93 minutes | documentary

‘Gunda’ is a film that deviates strongly from the beaten track, both in content and artistically. It is an observing and intimate portrait of Gunda, a large sow who has just given birth, who lives on a Norwegian farm. The film opens with a short shot of the dark entrance to the stable, after which the camera takes us into the straw to meet a couple of newborn and very cute piglets. This swamp country, where pigs can romp around freely in the straw and regularly go outside to refresh themselves on fresh vegetation or take a beneficial mud bath, seems miles away from intensive livestock farming, an infernal environment that treats animals as commodities for trade and production. rather than as living beings.

What is especially striking is the sobriety of the film. All images are shot in black and white, while the music and voice-over shine through their absence. The only auditory elements you hear are the sounds of the farm animals and insects, the twittering and singing of birds and the patter of the rain against the wooden stable wall when a shower breaks. In addition, there is not a hint of anthropomorphism in the film. Director Victor Kosakovskiy observes and documents. He follows Gunda and her offspring from a distance, without anthropomorphizing, glorifying, mythologizing or seeing the animals as scientific object of study. Because Gunda absolutely does not care about the cameras that follow her, we get to see very closely what the emotional lives of a mother pig and her offspring, critters that explore their living environment with a youthful playfulness and naivety.

In addition to Gunda and her piglets, Kosakovskiy also zooms in on two other prominent farm animals, chickens and cows. We see how a group of chickens take the first steps outside a cramped transport box. Beautiful images that show the birds delicately scanning the grass and gently introducing an environment that meets their natural needs. At least as moving are the cows, which playfully and enthusiastically saunter through the grasslands and sniff the scent of fresh flowers with visible pleasure. The film takes the time to let the images speak. Don’t expect quick montages or much change of scenery: The documentary follows the slow rhythm of rustic country life.

Sometimes there are also short moments that break the farm idyll. A good example is the scene where Gunda is quite rough with one of the piglets and seems to trample the impotent animal. A mistake or perhaps an instinctive, natural reaction to a weak animal that is not viable in the long run? In any case, it is in stark contrast to the gentle way in which Gunda treats her piglets throughout the rest of the film. Among the chickens we see specimens with few feathers and even an animal that only has one leg. Victims of the often merciless pecking order?

Although he never comes into view, the human being is continuously latently present in the background, as if he is watching unseen and unheard behind a wall. All the animals in the film are ultimately at his mercy. That wall is torn down towards the end of the film, resulting in a heartbreaking scene (that caused the director and crew to burst into tears) that could be interpreted as a silent plea for a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle.

The film works mainly because Kosakovskiy succeeds with verve in making Gunda a real character, a being with feelings, emotions, needs and wants instead of an anonymous production animal. Because the director achieves this with minimalist means and without humanizing animals, ‘Gunda’ is probably an even more powerful visual argument for the intrinsic value of animal lives than the confrontational films that are full of gruesome slaughterhouse images.

‘Gunda’ also holds up a mirror to man in an extremely subtle way. The fact that animals cannot understand us can often be traced back to our own superiority: they are too stupid to get through to our complex mastermind. However, Kosakovskiy plays cautiously with the question of whether the roles are sometimes reversed. Isn’t our field of view too limited to understand the often complex behavior of other animals? For example, behind the monotonous grunt of pigs, for example, there are hundreds of different sounds, sounds that each have a different meaning. Moreover, a pig also largely lives in the world of smells, as their sense of smell picks up many more nuances of smell than the human nose.

‘Gunda’ is therefore a brave dive into the surprisingly complex emotional life of an animal that for many people is little more than the supplier of a tasty bacon steak or a thick bratwurst. An organism that is more intelligent than a dog, but mainly used rather than coddled.