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| Courtesy of NEON |
Just a couple of years after his 2018 water documentary epic
Aquarela sent tidal waves through the film world as the most dangerous
nonfiction movie ever made, Russian documentary filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky
redirected his attention to another kind of natural force. Albeit much smaller than the Tsunamis and
icebergs moving about but no less integral to the daily life we live and take
for granted, Kossakovsky set his sights on a mother pig named Gunda and
her offspring of piglets on a farmland intended for slaughter.
Kossakovsky then watched the Academy Awards
and notably Joaquin Phoenix’s Best Actor win for Joker whose acceptance
speech segued into an impassioned speech about animal rights. Kossakovsky then approached Phoenix with the
idea of signing on to the then developing Gunda project for which he
served as an executive producer.
Shot in stark black-and-white by Egil Håskjold Larsen
alongside Kossakovsky with intense painstaking care and patience with next to
no music or dialogue save for the soft grunting and squealing of pigs, the soft
clucking of some chickens and some occasional cow moos all rendered stunningly
in Dolby Atmos sound, Gunda like Aquarela before it is ethereal
experiential cinema as documentary filmmaking.
Though Kossakovsky himself is vegan, Gunda is bereft of any
agendas or leanings, resisting providing a point of view or narrative, instead
letting shots run on as we absorb the sights and sounds to get a better idea of
what it feels like to be cattle on a farm.
Simply put, it lets you live the life of these animals for a couple of
hours without a guiding hand other than the animal sounds and movements to connect
you to what’s happening onscreen.
The use of the Arri Alexa Mini LF
allowed for a variety of stunningly beautiful extreme close-ups of the animals
whether it be a pig’s eye or a chicken foot in mid-step, bringing us as close
to the efforts of a David Attenborough Planet Earth special with an even
greater sense of purity. Instead of
having a voice telling us how to interpret the footage onscreen, Kossakovsky
lets the animals and their language do the talking instead.
Fully endorsed by Paul Thomas Anderson at the time of the
film’s North American release by NEON, Gunda like Kossakovsky’s previous
work has a hypnotic staying power that lasts long after the film has finished
despite the meditative and occasionally dreamy nature of the piece. With this and Aquarela Kossakovsky has
proven to be one of the most exciting and wholly original documentary
filmmakers just starting to emerge into world cinematic consciousness.
While not quite as strong as his water
documentary, Gunda is no less extraordinary in its ability to take an
otherwise mundane subject and allow it to breathe and spread its wings. Moreover, it makes you think twice without
being patronizing about our own connection with what we do or don’t eat, food
for thought. Once again, another great
acquisition for NEON and furtherance of Kossakovsky’s reputation as a nonfiction
storyteller to watch for!
--Andrew Kotwicki
