Animals Rising

Between the impacts of climate change and humankind’s more conscious efforts to destroy wild habitats, it’s easy to view the natural world as being widely under siege and in retreat. Two recent films show how, pushed to the brink, the animal world might someday choose to strike back. Both are revenge fantasies in which cold-blooded humans are forced to pay the price for their speciesism — the term that philosopher and animals’ rights activist Peter Singer coined more than 40 years ago — and outright brutality. That both are from Eastern Europe is probably coincidental, as the sensibilities of the films are completely different.

It’s no accident that the events in both Spoor, by Polish director Agnieszka Holland and her daughter Kasia Adamik, and White God, by Hungarian filmmaker Kornel Mundruczo, are seen through the eyes of a strong-willed, fiercely independent female. Both narratives seem to be using animals to make a larger point about a resurgence in authoritarianism in the world, which more often than not targets women.

In White God, Lili, a 13-year-old girl, is forced to spend the summer with her emotionally distant father when her mother packs off to an overseas conference. Unfortunately, her mixed-breed dog, Hagen, isn’t welcome and after a visit from canine control, Lili’s father puts Hagen out on the roadside. As Lili bridles against her father’s rules and the stern conductor of the youth orchestra in which she plays trumpet, Hagen eludes capture on the streets of Budapest, only to be sold by a would-be rescuer to a dog-fighting promoter, who trains Hagen to be a killer.

Spoor (the English title refers to traces left behind by hunted game), which had its North American premiere in September at the New York Film Festival, is set in an idyllic-looking valley on the border between Poland and the Czech Republic. Its heroine, Duszejko, a retired engineer, astrologist and vegetarian in her sixties who lives alone with her two herding dogs in a rural farmhouse, becomes increasingly agitated at being awoken early mornings by gunshots from nearby hunters. After her dogs disappear one day, she takes a keener interest in her neighbors’ activities and starts badgering the local police with reports of tortured and slaughtered animals just as the valley’s hunters begin turning up dead.

Both films depict the cruelty of humans who treat animals as something to be exploited and discarded. Holland cleverly opens each of her film’s seasonal sections with a list of the kinds of wild game that can be hunted at that time of year. While only White God is told partly from an animal’s perspective, both films are sure to leave viewers thinking about their relationships to animals and whether it’s time to rethink the assumptions behind human domination. Yet both filmmakers have explained in interviews that they don’t want their films to be seen as polemics. By mashing together genres — fairy tale, crime thriller, feminist epic — Holland and Mundruczko are trying to not only entertain but also prod audiences toward a keener understanding of the world we now live in.

In his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, Peter Singer wrote that “the taking into account of the interests of the being, whatever those interests may be – must, according to the principle of equality, be extended to all beings, black or white, masculine or feminine, human or nonhuman.” But Spoor and White God are probing deeper than just a plea for animal rights to draw attention to a revival of authoritarianism that has been overtaking much of the world.

This is clear not just in such countries as Russia and China, where despots now rule with heavier hands, but in democracies like the United States and India. A recent New York Times op-ed cited the raiding of an influential cable news station and online outlet by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation and widespread suspicion by professionals in India that their phones are tapped and their online behavior is being monitored.

Some viewers have interpreted Budapest’s ban on mixed-breed dogs in White God as a commentary on Europe’s growing intolerance toward immigrants fleeing harsh conditions in other parts of the world, but they as easily represent any of the world’s most vulnerable beings. Mundruczko said in an interview that as painful as the violence in his film is to watch, he and his collaborators decided it had to be faced honestly. “Violence is surrounding us. It’s like we’re living in the Middle Ages,” he said. “I felt humans are the ones who have become animals.”

At a post-screening press conference at the Berlin Film Festival, where Spoor won the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize earlier this year, Holland spoke about political changes that have occurred since she began working on Spoor four years ago, and an actress from the film said, “This is what totalitarian powers fight first — women and nature.”

On another occasion, Holland said, “I always take the side of the character that wants to do something to change the world.” The belief that women of Holland’s generation once held that the world could be made more just and conducive to peaceful coexistence is starting to vanish in every corner of the world, as if it was a fake dream, she added.

“Who is now defending this belief? It’s mostly older women, protesting against authoritarian guys who are taking power and holding power and who direct their power immediately against ecology and against women’s rights,” Holland said. “So probably our time came and now we will do something to save this world.”

Mundruczko’s film led him to another thought about human brutality. “Dogs love us as humans more than we love ourselves. How we hate ourselves. That’s why we use the language of power and [enforce] all these stupid rules.”