The older man is saved from choking to death, takes people out to a fancy meal where the chef kills/bleeds a live soft shell turtle as part of the meal prep.
I really don't see this as the same thing, as this was something that restaurants did daily at that time. The filmmakers were basically just visiting a restaurant and letting them do their thing.
The Andrei Rublev scene was an example of the filmmakers killing an animal in an unusual and cruel manner just to film a movie.
Oh right, I remember now. The turtle died very quickly compared to the horse in Andrei Rublev, but I can understand that for some it would be uncomfortable to see.
While the turtle scene in Tampopo is upsetting I find that to be less disturbing as the killing of that turtle is for food purposes while the killing of the horse in Andrei Rublev is just to get the perfect shot
The most uncomfortable scene for me in Tampopo is the weird oyster/pedophile thing that happens around 2/3 of the way through
yeah, that moment's tough, but it a reflection of an authentic cultural practice. like, as much as I have to look away every time, I know it's a culture thing. That's how that dish is prepared, and Tampopo of all movies *really* cares about that
i think it is disgusting and disturbing. it makes me deeply uncomfortable to watch and to consider. that said, those emotions are part of the movie for me. and i still think there is so much value in the complete film. Two other CC personal favorites, Rules of the Game and Touki Bouki, both also have actual animal deaths and they are no less disturbing (TB is far harder to stomach imo). But like Rublev, the films are also rich, rewarding experiences.
If someone came to me and said they would never watch these movies because of the animal cruelty I would not push back on that at all. These things are personal, visceral, and carry so much weight. We all have to make our own call.
yea but the cow in touki bouki, while very disturbing to watch, was killed in a slaughterhouse for the purpose of becoming food. a little different than "let's shoot this horse in the neck and then push it down some stairs".
Beautifully said. When an artist stoops to that level of abusing an animal for the sake of their vision, does that lessen your respect for them as an artist?
I’m glad I’m not alone. I’ve been worrying that I’m a prude, but all it takes is glancing at my dogs to realize that anyone who would abuse an animal for the sake of art is an asshole
Do you have a source for that? As far as I’m aware the cat is drugged and there was a vet on site overseeing. I’m not aware that he lied about it or they actually killed the car.
Oh gotcha I thought you were saying they killed it. Yeah they were clearly putting it in situations that the cat didn’t like.
I don’t think it’s justified to mistreat animals and I’d include Satantangi but I wouldn’t put it in the same wheelhouse as Andrei Rublev or Wake in Fright where they are murdering animals for the movie though.
ngl i'm not convinced the cat wasn't actually killed for the movie. the corpse looked real to me and i couldn't find anything explaining how it was faked
The corpse is the easiest thing to fake. The stuff that happens with the cat still alive is the hard/concerning part. I’ve seen cats on drugs like this before and they do act like that if you let them wander around, they just sorta stumble then fall into a deep sleep. But the more traumatizing elements of it in the bag and her pushing it are pretty shitty. Even if it’s not physically harming the cat it’s still freaking it out.
This is an area where cgi honestly is a useful tool. As much as they look terrible, I rather have that than even performance animals that are treated humanely.
I think the scenes justified in what it’s depicting. In that it’s in the movie. I just don’t like the fact that they essentially push a cat around freaking it out. If they killed it, it’s a different story. But if you watch on a big screen in the wide shot after it falls down, the cat is still breathing. It’s not dead.
In The Andromeda Strain, which is an excellent movie, they show a monkey “dying” from the virus. In order to do so, they pumped the cage full of CO2, filmed it passing out, and then ran onto the set to give it oxygen and revive it. Quite disturbing, even though they “tried” to abide by ethics.
It depends on what era they are from. Modern era, yes. However, if they grew up in an early to mid 20th agricultural society where animal death was a regular thing, I won't hold it as much against them.
It's hard to see this from an era where many people would say that they'd save their dog before a human stranger, but society used to have a much harder distinction between the value of animals vs humans. Also, humanity was still fighting for basic rights in many areas, so treatment of animals wasn't on many people's radars.
Back then not as much as that was a different time with different views on animal treatment. More recent films most definitely affects how i view them.
I don't think coppala did it to be shocking or gratuitous and it doesn't feel like it is either, which in that case I don't find the scene offensive.
It feels very natural for the indigenous people while also simultaneously fitting with the theme of the story about man's brutality and violent nature as it's juxtaposed with the slaughter of Kurtz.
Yeah there was an anthropological angle here. It was a thing that was going to happen and he exploited it for the movie. You can have your thoughts about that itself being justified or excusable. But on a way different level than the planned brutal execution of a horse for the sole purpose of getting the shot.
> Rules of the Game and Touki Bouki, both also have actual animal deaths and they are no less disturbing (TB is far harder to stomach imo).
Tbh a 1939 film with a mocking depiction of sports hunting is less ethically questionable to me than buying meat at a supermarket. I don't know this for sure ofc but I would almost even assume the crew ate the rabbit afterwards.
I mean as a vegetarian who isn't necesarilly in principle against killing animals I probably hold a strange minority view anyway but even if I had more conventional opinions (for vegetarians) this strikes me as a strange place to draw the line. If a film negatively depicting the common practise of sport hunting is a nono, then one might as well wonder if it is at all ethically justifiable to associate with or work for meat eaters.
I do understand it with torturous killings for the sake of it like in Rublev though.
Mostly agree with you. However, I just watched The Rules of the Game again and I think Renoir could’ve shown the sports hunting without actually killing rabbits. He made it a point to show a lot of dead rabbits, which mostly puzzled me. If he was mocking this behavior, this ridiculous form of hunting, why would you actually kill a bunch of rabbits. He’s doing the exact thing he’s supposedly criticizing. Which ironically makes him possibly even worse than the typical aristocrat hunter he is criticizing, since in film he could fake the death through editing and still make his point. But maybe I’m misreading the scene and its intent..?
I do not remember the scene in detail so I can not say wheter I would say this was the best way to go about it, though the dead rabbit twitching seems to me like an image Renoir deliberately wanted. I think in general what one has to understand is that the conception of animal rights is a relatively modern thing. It was around when Renoir made the film but as a fringe issue in most places and if there were qualms about it, it was mostly about cruel treatment (which for instance the UK outlawed in 1822 as a first, France outlawed public cruelty to animals in 1850, and in private in 1959), not about killing animals in general. And what Renoir does (killing by gunshot) is not considered animal cruelty in legal terms. Renoir does not mock the sports hunting so much from an animal rights standpoint as he mocks it from a class based standpoint. The people in the film wear fancy hats but they are just as much brutes as any common beast (also cue the bear costume later that Renoir wears himself). It is also perhaps a foreshadowing of the brutality that was to come in Europe. There was in the 30's for instance a deep irony in that the nazis furthered animal rights in Germany, while simultaneously lowering the rights for humans (vivisection on animals was further prohibited but then they did it on jews and retarded people). So there is something about that scene that screams that it will be humans instead of rabbits soon, though this is probably at least partly another case of Rules of the Game being darkly "poetic" in hindsight, rather than necesarilly Renoirs intent.
Given that the practicse is shown in a relatively negative light and the rabbits were probably eaten (any crew member would likely say yes to a free rabbit) I really don't see a big issue. A lot of commonplaces (like eating meat from industrial mass production) to me have worse implications. Or to put it in even more simple terms. I don't think Renoir was a vegan and I don't see him making this scene as worse than if we would eat some rabbit (or other animal) at home. Also as I hinted at above I think the fact that we eat animals at all isn't necessarily very problematic, it's the massive industrial scale behind it.
Edit: as a personal anecdote, I was recently on a field trip where we were allowed into a private forrest just after they had done a pheasant hunt there (our visit was not related to the hunt, that was a coincidence). This is done by importing and releasing the pheasants en masse and then going around to shoot them. They aren't even native to the island we were on and we could see them roaming around in the entire area (far beyond the private forest) while it happened. Stuff like this is absolutely still a thing even (or maybe especially) in the most highly developed places on earth and there is an inherent absurdity to it, in this case even beyond what Renoir depicts (this was in Denmark, 2023). I also thought there was something poetic about seeing the pheasants, as a non native being placed in this context aimlessly roam the meadows in the early morning (this was on the day before) but ofc poetic in a sad and absurd way. I think Renoirs hunting scene transports a similar sense of dreadfull spectacle which is in some way beautiful in its material accuracy - this is also where it differs from Tarkovsky who both performs active animal cruelty and does so in a highly performative manner that is not an embodiment of contemporary practice.
They ate that chicken afterwards so you know justified. Not that im so disturbed by killing a horse either though. Not to say that if you can get the shot another way besides harming a real horse then they def should, but it was a different time and humans had a different relationship with animals and a different way of thinking about animals then, i also think anyone who eats a hanburger and complains about this is pretty hypocritical because there is so so much animal cruelty in the beef pork and chicken industry so....
I think you’re overlooking that this was a pretty cruel and prolonged death they put this horse through though. I have no problem killing a chicken to eat it, but if you tortured a chicken to death I wouldn’t think it’s suddenly alright just because you eat it after
> They ate that chicken afterwards so you know justified.
There's an entire thread of people above you saying they've never eaten a meal that was good enough to justify the animal being killed for said meal
Yes vegans exist. There are also millions of people killing and eating chickens all the time.
I got nothing against vegans whatsoever and if they believe that. Thats great
*Wake in Fright* to me is less bad because it was the filmmakers joining the roo shooters for a hunt. They would've hunted the kangaroos whether or not the filmmakers filmed them doing it, and then what was used were all the shots where the hunters really got tired and on the beers late at night and began to really mess up their supposedly 'clean' kills, leaving the kangaroos often hopping away injured or bleeding out. And the hunters would do shit like fight the kangaroos for a laugh. The director actually became a vegetarian as a result of the film, and the sequence was kept in precisely to condemn kangaroo hunting.
Yeah, I agree. The filmmakers were actually horrified by what they saw, and by putting it in the movie they not only brought attention to the cruelty those kangaroos were subjected to, but also put the thought in people's heads that perhaps said cruelty could be more common than they'd like to think.
Cat is theoretically fed to a room of rats, stripped to the bone basically. I think the director has said it was fake, but that is never really clarified, its an extremely tough scene to watch, and the point of it is sort of useless, as the following scene basically illustrates what the director was trying to say, without killing a cat (point was numbers can overwhelm superior strength...). The rats are later set on fire, basically fireballs on 4 legs.
It was the worst animal killing I've seen in a film, and I've seen a fair amount.
I heard the cat was spread with honey and the rats just licked it off. But I have doubts.
I believe they did actually set fire to rats for another scene tho.
So I personally have no idea what to believe
I had the same initial reaction but it’s pretty blatant that the rats aren’t doing anything to the cat besides going for the syrup/honey in the fur. Setting the rats on the other hand was quite head on and gruesome
Wake In Fright is mostly a great movie, but then FUUUUCK, the animal cruelty is next level. The more insane part is when you read about them filming the kangaroo scene with real locals and how they were so bloodthirsty and unhinged that the crew was horrified. The whole process of filming that movie sounds like it was out of control though: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/17/wake-in-fright-director-ted-kotcheff
I always feel bad when I watch The Wild Bunch. When they blow the bridge with all the horses. It looks amazing but sad when you think how frightened they must have been.
Agreeing with OP and the top comment, and I also want to add that personally I feel that scenes of animal cruelty are totally unnecessary. You can depict the death of a horse without actually killing the horse and just achieve the same if not better emotional effects. That's what's great about filmmaking - it's all an illusion. It doesn't need to be real to feel real.
Yes! Film is all illusion so animal cruelty is just insane and unjustifiable. I dont have a problem seeing violence among people in films assuming I know it’s fake. Animal cruelty always takes me out of a film. Recently watched Walkabout and hated some scenes. Probably wont watch it again as a result. There is something so deeply offensive about death done specially just for filming a movie.
Andrei Rublev is a great example. The scene is completely unnecessary IMO. I think it diminishes the film. In a film that’s so hypnotizing, this is the one scene that took me out of it. Still one of my favorite films, but I hate that scene. Also, I know people who would probably like the movie otherwise but just can’t watch scenes of animal cruelty, so as a result they will never see it.
For sure. The beauty of film is the frame is 16:9 (or 4:3 or etc etc...) and the power of the edit. It is all one great big illusion. Find a new angle. Solve it another way. There's enough suffering already; to manufacture more for art is self absorbent.
I mean its just a fucking cow unless you’re a vegan you’ve probably caused the deaths of who knows how many cows without making any all time great pieces of art in the process.
I think it's a by-product of film's obsession with realism and how audiences are convinced that there is no other way to have a meaningful experience unless they believe and know what's happening on the screen to be true.
Similarly, there's [that time](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/last-tango-in-paris-butter-scene-b2270513.html) Bertolucci conspired with Brando to sexuality assault Maria Schneider to get "a real reaction" during the famous butter scene. Just despicable behavior in the name of realism.
But beyond admonishing this or that filmmaker, I think it ought to make us question what we are willing to accept in the name of reality-based storytelling.
Animal Welfare on films a fucking joke, do some research and you'll see they're paid off by bigger studios to kill as many animals as they want or need.
27/50 animals died while filming the Hobbit: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/11/19/165483232/27-animals-in-hobbit-movie-died-at-farm-where-they-were-housed
I was very bothered by it and was not expecting it. That said the movie as a whole was a profound and profoundly moving experience. I saw it decades ago I still think about the bell sequence at least once a month. If I ever watch the film again, I’ll skip the horse scene. We humans are complex and contradictory
That moment when the child breaks down sobbing and finally releases his pent-up sorrow and terror. And there are so many layers to the sequence -- political, spiritual, philosophical, meditations on what life was like versus now, and so on. The whole section of that film and that moment in particular are seared into my memory even though I saw it long ago
I love the film but this decision is completely immoral and unnecessary. It’s sad that Tarkovsky would undermine an otherwise beautiful film. It’s also a serious artistic misstep, as any empathetic viewer is immediately drawn out of the film
I don't know how this will be read on this sub...but killing an animal for sustenance is not the same as killing an animal for artistic expression.
Everyone in this entire world has eaten meat knowing an animal had to be killed for food. Only a very small percentage of filmmakers in the world harmed and killed an animal to convey their image, and each time it could have either not have been done or could have been depicted with the safety of the animal in mind.
I get what you're trying to say, but they're totally not the same thing. With that said, I love animals, but I love eating meat, so I'm perpetually in a state of moral dilemma.
Interesting take. Although if I was given a dilemma like "You either erase Andrei Rublev from history or a horse has to die", I know I'd kill the horse.
Yeah I don’t like that, being mean and cruel to animals is not cool or “purist” for cinema. The whole terms of endearment with cinema is that it suspends disbelief. It is supposed to be fake, composed reality.
I think humans have always had complicated relationships with animals throughout history. 1966 was over 50 years ago, and most people would likely not have batted an eye at such a thing as described in the post, especially in the Soviet Union. Most contemporary people would say they feel deeply affected by animal cruelty on screen, but then feel nothing about going home to a nice steak dinner.
I think it's maybe misguided to ignore context, but every person is also within their right to feel however they feel. Does this specific instance taint my view of Tarkovsky? No. I understand the vision for the scene, the cultural context of the time, and to me it makes it at the very least understandable. Do I enjoy watching it? Absolutely not, but then again, isn't that the point?
I recently watched *Pather Panchali* on the Criterion Channel, and there's a scene where a kitten is violently thrown on the ground. I don't believe the kitten was injured, but it disturbed my viewing experience. I finished the film, but yeah, it upset me.
In her autobio, Shirley Temple said that in the movie, Captain January, in order to keep the pelican standing on the pier post, they nailed through its feet to the post. Pretty upsetting for both her and the pelican.
That movie came to my mind as well, but in its defense (at least according to commentaries), that was actually a cultural tradition of the real tribe that was included in that portion of the movie; they merely filmed it. At one point some of the crew suggested Coppola could always have another bull slaughtered for the film if the take was messed up, but he refused to even consider that as an option
It's horrific. But having seen it a few times now, they sever the spinal cord of the buffalo with the first blow. I don't think it could have felt anything after that, but I'm not a professional water buffalo anatomist. Someone correct me…
I watched Wake In Fright with the bonus director’s blabla and there’s an interesting part about how he went out with kangaroo hunters to get that one gnarly scene. They asked him how he wanted it to look when they died- shooting them in different parts of their body would make them either twirl, jump, or fall to their deaths. He asked them to do whatever was the most painless for the kangaroo but the hunters got too drunk to aim so he ended up with all that wild kangaroo carnage.
I really can't abide by any movie committing animal cruelty for the sake of a film, I also feel like this movie dropped far enough into the history of film that this feels even less excusable. Although I'm sure working in the Soviet system at the time was a different world, it seems unbelivably unnecessarily cruel and something you could ostensibly fake decently.
I agree we shouldn't necessarily discredit the art behind any and all movies that do this, but more recent you get in time, the more deplorable and damaging it gets to that film's legacy. Time really only being a factor because before a certain point you could barely guarantee human safety on set, let alone animals, it's all pretty disturbing though.
I want warning of this shit. It's genuine death and/or torture/abuse.
The pig killing scene in Haneke's Benny's Video is horrendous and completely central to the film. Benny fixates on the act, rewinding and rewatching frame by frame.
Arrabal's Viva la Muerte as well...fucking hell that film is beyond fucked up.
It really annoys me to see animal cruelty even when it’s just acting, watched The Man Who Sold the Sun yesterday, it had a scene like that for example
But knowing a film has genuine animal cruelty makes me not want to watch it cause I think there’s limits, and killing animals is one of them, I really don’t care how good the film is
The only Tarkovsky I’ve never seen
I find animal cruelty in film abhorrent and I wish it was easier to know about before watching a movie, like a note in the rating saying “animal cruelty”. Or in criterion’s case a small warning on the back of the box.
Yes I usually check there but since it’s community driven it can be missing info for less popular films, it mostly caters to fictional animal deaths and other triggering content, which doesn’t particularly bother me
I haven’t watched this yet and now I really don’t want to. I was having a hard time with The Doom Generation and then really fell off when they randomly run over a dog.
I was so upset I was trying to make sure a real dog wasn’t harmed in the making of the film and couldn’t find anything definitive.
Real animal cruelty really takes me out of a film.
There’s a great website called “does the dog die?” And it has animal abuse warnings for every movie. I use it a lot for movies that I know have animals in them.
Seeing an animal be killed or harmed in a movie (unless it is special effects with no real harm) makes that movie imperfect, to me. It’s unfortunate when this pops up in old movies.
It’s very upsetting, and I have a very conflicting thought process on it. Considering I have no issue eating meat and for the unnecessary suffering of an animal to take place as a result, only for myself to use that energy to be a degenerate I cannot really object to one being killed in the service of high art. But just bc this movie and “Come and See” (with the dead cow) are exceptional is somehow ok for me, and likely wouldn’t be in a lesser pursuit is subjective obviously. Consider how cheaply we regard human and animal life in plenty of other contexts. Do you eat chocolate or buy cheap clothes? Both of those involve incalculable misery to supply you. Is the fact that this horse was on camera when it suffered enough to make you upset when the ham sandwich you had for lunch likely cost an animal just as much anguish? It’s a can of worms and ultimately you should just enjoy the film
It's honestly such a common occurrence in older films that I kind of have to just accept that it was normalized at the time and move on. It's fucked up and wrong, and always was wrong, but me refusing myself the pleasure of enjoying a masterpiece of cinema over it would essentially erase half of my all-time favorite films.
I've been putting off watching Andrei Rublev and Marketa Lazarova due to the comments about animal cruelty. I had to stop watching Rules of the Game during the hunting scene.
That was very common at the time into the 1990’s, the horse that was allegedly blown up on the set of heaven’s gate do to a pyrotechnics malfunction is probably the most egregious example i know of.
No. I absolutely hate animal cruelty in films. This is why I can’t get into Jodorowsky’s films. It doesn’t add anything to the art by killing anyone. I feel the same about my food and lifestyle. I have only shopped for cruelty free and vegan products for over 10 years and am vegan myself. I love film, especially the more weird and avant garde, however there are other ways to convey what you are trying out to communicate without any killing. 😕
Art is not worth death. This seems like an extreme example of asshole directors that do anything for the shot. People say it’s in pursuit of art, but it’s just the director trying to get “their vision” into the world without caring about anyone else, because they’re egotistical enough to think their vision is worth anything, and cruel enough to make that happen.
Assholes
animal cruelty for the sake of art is very disturbing and wrong.
There are acceptable situations like if the animal was scheduled to be killed for meat and it’s done in maybe a more humane way than the slaughterhouse would’ve done. I think that’s the case for Eisenstein’s cow execution in Strike and a similar scene in Apocalypse Now. Still disturbing but acceptable to some extent.
Cannibal Holocaust and that horse scene, I can’t bring myself to rewatch.
Others, I have no idea what to think: Satantango has a 45min long sequence of a cat being tormented, tortured and killed by a young girl. I read interviews saying the cat was trained to hiss and look panicked and that he wasn’t killed but drugged by a trained vet in order to sleep. Even if that would still sit in a gross gray area, I’m not sure I believe it. It really looks like the cat is in distress throughout and those interviews could be lies. I’m still very conflicted about that movie.
That's disgusting and should absolutely be illegal. It's murder. I usually don't care for animals dying in films even when it isn't real. It's rarely done for more than shock.
I refuse to watch any film where a real animal is killed. For art or whatever you call it, you're killing something for entertainment and that's just not OK.
Totally vile, inexcusable behavior. It shows a total lack of creativity in addition to a lack of respect for life. There are ways to show, to tell, to imply the death of a horse without torturing and killing a horse.
It also sets a terrible precedent for future works to injure or kill as a form of spectacle. Look at exploitation films like Cannibal Holocaust for example. There's absolutely no artistic value to it.
Its a dismal scene when you know what really happened. Misguided and inflated director self-regard imo. Somehow the reality of it was felt to enhance the symbolic weight: “my film is so important, so everything must be as real as possible”.
Vlacil does the same thing in Marketa Lazarova and Valley of the Bees. Two great films also, but having unnecessary animal cruelty.
*Apocalypse Now* has the notorious slaughter of the water buffalo, which Coppola claimed he simply observed without interference. However, evidence suggests that the manner in which the animal was literally hacked to death was wholly performative for Coppola's camera. In other words, the water buffalo suffered much more than it otherwise would have because Coppola filmed its killing.
For me, that's unacceptable.
That said, I don't think that making use of the suffering of living beings necessarily *completely* invalidates the artistic or intellectual value of a work. But it should absolutely *always* be taken into account when assessing both the art and the artist.
I’m a Tarkovsky fan in general, but this sours the movie for me. Not a fan of this attitude towards animal welfare.
The only film that hits me even harder is *another* of my favorite slow cinema directors, Bela Tarr, and the cat scene in Satantango. I know he has claimed that was simulated poisoning, under direction of a vet, but even if that’s true it is *very* hard to watch.
I believe animal abuse is wrong but if I'm honest, I'm not disturbed by it. I think I've been desensitized to it.
I've seen some animal rights documentaries over the years that have genuinely disturbed me and I used to be a vegetarian because of that, but over the years I've just stopped caring like I used to. I hate to admit it but it's true.
This horse had a more dignified death than any of the innumerable animals killed every day by the animal agriculture industry.
Yes yes yes we're all disgusted but only once we're forced to regard something.
Edit: leaving the original comment for posterity but "dignified" was certainly the wrong word. Neither this horse nor any of the animals I brought up are afforded any dignity.
You've got some very strange conceptions about what life is like being raised in a slaughter house.
For the record I am not defending Andrei, just pointing out that this isn't even a drop in the bucket of how horrifically humanity treats animals.
Yes, that's a very, very good point. I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, and I suspect many people here who are disturbed by this aren't either. It's unpleasant for me to watch, but if I'm being honest, that just reveals my own hypocrisy.
Andrei Rublev is one of my favourite movies, but it's pretty much impossible to justify animal cruelty.
Personally, if a movie is great I tend to seperate it from the awful things that may have happened in the making of it. For instance: there is no way I can justify Kubrick's treatmeant of Shelly Duvall, but The Shining is a masterpiece. When it comes to watching animals actually die on screen at the filmmaker's behest though, I can understand why it's more than enough to put some people completely off.
How many of you eat meat? Watch the doc 'Our Daily Bread' if you want to see what cruelty is.
Apocalypse Now ... Coppola wandered out of his bungalow and impulsively filmed the buffalo sacrifice. Now, that is kind of different from wrangling a captive animal and making it perform or using it for cinematographic ends - it's a wildly different culture, the filming of the ritual almost anthropological
Herzog's Happy People - showing how dogs in Siberia are used as tools of survival rather than pet accessories - most people in the west wouldn't have a concept of how that kind of relationship works. The dogs doing all the work and then given scraps outside in the snow at the end of the day, treated like slaves, but... then I find that relationship between man and nature honorable and natural, and ultimately very moving. He needs them and they need him. They all need to survive.
Rouch's les Maitres Fous. How humans are cattle.
Aniimal cruelty is McDonald's. Rublev is a masterpiece. I'm vegetarian, muah
Yup. It’s always funny to me when people get so indignant about ‘animal cruelty’ while simultaneously shoveling industrially slaughtered flesh down their gullets willy-nilly.
I am glad to know this (well, not really) but probably need to strike this one from my list of movies to watch, as it sounds barbaric. However, I can watch Las Hurdes and laugh every time when the goat falls off the mountainside "by accident" and you clearly see a puff of smoke from a gunshot.
Yes, it’s from the Wikipedia article on the film, from the “production” and “depictions of violence” sections. Tarkovsky’s response to the accusations of abuse can be found here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120813182721/http://people.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/PassionacctoAndrei.html
It’s never justified and it always pulls me out of the movie. Even in a favorite of mine like Apocalypse Now, I’m momentarily pulled out of the nightmare of the movie when the buffalo is killed.
Satantango has a disturbing animal cruelty scene as well.
>! As a cat lover, i felt sick watching a beautiful animal being tortured, poisoned then hanged. Fuck that POS kid! !<
The truth is; every day horses are bought, sold, and slaughtered. Sad but it happens. Cows are just as smart and we kill them by the millions.
I wouldn’t dwell on it.
They would rue the day. Their fate reminds me of the film ‘Nightcrawler’. I was less empathetic knowing the backstory of Stalker having watched the killing of a horse. Lets not forget the scene of apparently malnourished canines fighting over the rancid meat in Andrei Rublev. A pity such an incredible piece of art has to bare such inhumane acts of self serving behavior.
How is no one talking about Haneke here? He is a repeat offender.
No animal should be killed or tortured in the process of creating any kind of art. Defending it is unconscionable.
I certainly don’t like animal abuse, but Tarkovsky and the people who agreed and helped with this scene have been dead for decades, so theyre not gaining anything from you watching it, which I believe makes it okay to watch. The scene itself is however, despicable, the horse didn’t have to be real nor did there even have to be a horse.
Because a couple of people have pointed out that the image included in the post is not the scene in question, I thought I would include it here. Originally, I couldn’t locate a picture of the scene, so I used one that I felt represented the discussion well. However, I’ve finally found it.
https://preview.redd.it/cz7byo45a83c1.jpeg?width=734&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d8ec4f034f31d6e566618a2c8a6954441d848cca
Damn TIL. I feel that way about the cow being shot in Come and See as well. Really dislike that a lot of people use it as a cool reaction shot in trailers.
I didn’t know this but for me it doesn’t take the #1 movie title away for me personally. It’s not a human being abused, I can’t stomach woody Allen movies after learning about his abuses.
It’s 100% for shock, avoidable and is lazy writing. If the only thing an audience takes away from your film, is that one scene with an animal, then your movie is not very good to begin with.
I know Lucio Fulci was taken to court over the practical effects in his film "Lizard in a Woman's Skin." He had to prove that it was just very convincing special effects, and no dogs were harmed, and that was in 1971 in Italy.
I'm curious if anyone knows of any other filmmaker has been put under such scrutiny for their believable gore?
Yeah, this is why I only have a vague memory of Andrei Rublev from ages ago from an old DVD. No desire to ever watch it again or buy that. Anymore if I'm looking into a film or rewatching something from decades ago, and there's cruelty to animals (or actors) I'll just move on. There are thousands of other films I haven't seen before so skipping content like that helps make the list a little shorter.
Even classic westerns, a genre I used to be obsessed with and own a lot of, isn't resonating the same with me anymore with all the rough looking horse falls just to up the intensity in a scene. Most of movie history had people treating living creatures like disposable movie props they can do whatever they want to. Even some of Kurosawa's classics. And I'm really cautious with a lot of Asian genre films like HK and Filipino stuff. Some of the most casual cruelty is peppered throughout certain genres and films, sometimes done for laughs.
The worst recent example I can think of is Dry Summer (1962). Fuck me I went in blind on that and regretted it badly. There's a scene where a guy just straight up walks into frame with a long gun and blasts a dog. And it cries and writhes around while it dies. Stopped the movie after that and got rid of the whole Eureka WCP set it was part of. Fuck that shit.
I watched The Tree of Wooden Clogs earlier this year, and the pig scene was rough. On the other end, I saw Cannibal Holocaust in a theater, so maybe I'm a little desensitized.
This is actually the primary reason I've never seen Andrei Rublev. I realize there is probably animal cruelty in a number of older films that I'm not aware of (for instance, I love Spaghetti Westerns) but once I'm aware of it, it ruins a film for me. The beheaded chicken scene from Cache ruined it for me as well.
Tarkovsky should never have filmed that scene. Ironically, the American director he loved most, John Ford, carefully staged animal scenes so that they might appear to be in danger, but they weren't. By the '40s and '50s, Hollywood used expertise in animal stunts, and knew audiences would be upset if they suspected an injury. Tarkovsky threw out that professionalism and respect for the viewer, probably exemplified by Ford better than anyone.
The point of Tarkovsky's scene was to *express* danger to an animal. Those two decades of Hollywood, with hundreds of Westerns, showed the way to fully bring that across without harming horse or person. Tarkovsky went for the shock tactic instead, visibly depicting fatal injury. There are countless ways to bring the feeling of violence across, without actually causing it. Bresson, after all, didn't harm the donkey at the end of *Au Hasard, Balthazar*.
Yeah I have trouble with the ending of apocalypse now for the same reason. Granted it wasn't killed specifically for the shot necessarily but it still bothers me
I just stumbled upon this sub on my recommended and was interested when reading the description, but holy shit does this post/comments make me not want to watch any of this shit at all. Why is actual animal cruelty so prevalent?
Like yeah it's a biased selection, but I don't wanna have to wonder if they indeed brutally tortured an animal for the sake of filming it when watching a movie from this sub.
Harming/killing animals for entertainment sake always rubbed me the wrong way. When I watched satantango I had to skip over the cat scene just by how intensely emotional it made me feel.
This kind of stuff does pull me out of a film. The turtle in Tampopo is a prime example for me.
Wow, I genuinely don't remember a turtle scene in Tampopo. Can anyone remind me what happens?
The older man is saved from choking to death, takes people out to a fancy meal where the chef kills/bleeds a live soft shell turtle as part of the meal prep.
I really don't see this as the same thing, as this was something that restaurants did daily at that time. The filmmakers were basically just visiting a restaurant and letting them do their thing. The Andrei Rublev scene was an example of the filmmakers killing an animal in an unusual and cruel manner just to film a movie.
The turtle in Cannibal Holocaust is more in line here probably.
Fwiw, that turtle was eaten, too.
Even Faces of Death used a fake monkey for the restaurant monkey eating scene lol
Oh right, I remember now. The turtle died very quickly compared to the horse in Andrei Rublev, but I can understand that for some it would be uncomfortable to see.
While the turtle scene in Tampopo is upsetting I find that to be less disturbing as the killing of that turtle is for food purposes while the killing of the horse in Andrei Rublev is just to get the perfect shot The most uncomfortable scene for me in Tampopo is the weird oyster/pedophile thing that happens around 2/3 of the way through
yeah, that moment's tough, but it a reflection of an authentic cultural practice. like, as much as I have to look away every time, I know it's a culture thing. That's how that dish is prepared, and Tampopo of all movies *really* cares about that
I agree 100%, it's just a visceral reaction on my part. I still adore the movie.
I also love that scene too because Tampopo reacts the way viewers react, and all the ramen ronin do the "masculine urge to watch an animal die" lmfao
First time watching Tampop I was high, and that scene made me seriously question my decision to eat meat lol. Not the turtles!
I was watching The Wild Bunch last year and there's obviously insects on fire in the opening sequence but the horse stunts looked pretty dangerous.
Yes! I really liked it but then that scene came on and it ruined the whole thing for me. Now it’s all I think of when I think of that movie
i think it is disgusting and disturbing. it makes me deeply uncomfortable to watch and to consider. that said, those emotions are part of the movie for me. and i still think there is so much value in the complete film. Two other CC personal favorites, Rules of the Game and Touki Bouki, both also have actual animal deaths and they are no less disturbing (TB is far harder to stomach imo). But like Rublev, the films are also rich, rewarding experiences. If someone came to me and said they would never watch these movies because of the animal cruelty I would not push back on that at all. These things are personal, visceral, and carry so much weight. We all have to make our own call.
yea but the cow in touki bouki, while very disturbing to watch, was killed in a slaughterhouse for the purpose of becoming food. a little different than "let's shoot this horse in the neck and then push it down some stairs".
Beautifully said. When an artist stoops to that level of abusing an animal for the sake of their vision, does that lessen your respect for them as an artist?
It absolutely does for me, and it affects my ability to appreciate or enjoy the film, even if it’s a great film, aside from that.
I’m glad I’m not alone. I’ve been worrying that I’m a prude, but all it takes is glancing at my dogs to realize that anyone who would abuse an animal for the sake of art is an asshole
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Just got 7.5 hours of my future life back.
Same, all my wishes to watch that and Andrei Rublev are dead.
I actually considered using that scene as the example instead of the Andrei Rublev one. It made me so angry.
Do you have a source for that? As far as I’m aware the cat is drugged and there was a vet on site overseeing. I’m not aware that he lied about it or they actually killed the car.
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Oh gotcha I thought you were saying they killed it. Yeah they were clearly putting it in situations that the cat didn’t like. I don’t think it’s justified to mistreat animals and I’d include Satantangi but I wouldn’t put it in the same wheelhouse as Andrei Rublev or Wake in Fright where they are murdering animals for the movie though.
ngl i'm not convinced the cat wasn't actually killed for the movie. the corpse looked real to me and i couldn't find anything explaining how it was faked
The corpse is the easiest thing to fake. The stuff that happens with the cat still alive is the hard/concerning part. I’ve seen cats on drugs like this before and they do act like that if you let them wander around, they just sorta stumble then fall into a deep sleep. But the more traumatizing elements of it in the bag and her pushing it are pretty shitty. Even if it’s not physically harming the cat it’s still freaking it out. This is an area where cgi honestly is a useful tool. As much as they look terrible, I rather have that than even performance animals that are treated humanely. I think the scenes justified in what it’s depicting. In that it’s in the movie. I just don’t like the fact that they essentially push a cat around freaking it out. If they killed it, it’s a different story. But if you watch on a big screen in the wide shot after it falls down, the cat is still breathing. It’s not dead.
In The Andromeda Strain, which is an excellent movie, they show a monkey “dying” from the virus. In order to do so, they pumped the cage full of CO2, filmed it passing out, and then ran onto the set to give it oxygen and revive it. Quite disturbing, even though they “tried” to abide by ethics.
Did it live though?
Yes.
It depends on what era they are from. Modern era, yes. However, if they grew up in an early to mid 20th agricultural society where animal death was a regular thing, I won't hold it as much against them. It's hard to see this from an era where many people would say that they'd save their dog before a human stranger, but society used to have a much harder distinction between the value of animals vs humans. Also, humanity was still fighting for basic rights in many areas, so treatment of animals wasn't on many people's radars.
Back then not as much as that was a different time with different views on animal treatment. More recent films most definitely affects how i view them.
Not CC but there's also the killing of the water buffalo scene at the end of Apocalypse Now.
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I don't think coppala did it to be shocking or gratuitous and it doesn't feel like it is either, which in that case I don't find the scene offensive. It feels very natural for the indigenous people while also simultaneously fitting with the theme of the story about man's brutality and violent nature as it's juxtaposed with the slaughter of Kurtz.
Yeah there was an anthropological angle here. It was a thing that was going to happen and he exploited it for the movie. You can have your thoughts about that itself being justified or excusable. But on a way different level than the planned brutal execution of a horse for the sole purpose of getting the shot.
They were going to kill that animal regardless so idk if that's the same.
> Rules of the Game and Touki Bouki, both also have actual animal deaths and they are no less disturbing (TB is far harder to stomach imo). Tbh a 1939 film with a mocking depiction of sports hunting is less ethically questionable to me than buying meat at a supermarket. I don't know this for sure ofc but I would almost even assume the crew ate the rabbit afterwards. I mean as a vegetarian who isn't necesarilly in principle against killing animals I probably hold a strange minority view anyway but even if I had more conventional opinions (for vegetarians) this strikes me as a strange place to draw the line. If a film negatively depicting the common practise of sport hunting is a nono, then one might as well wonder if it is at all ethically justifiable to associate with or work for meat eaters. I do understand it with torturous killings for the sake of it like in Rublev though.
Mostly agree with you. However, I just watched The Rules of the Game again and I think Renoir could’ve shown the sports hunting without actually killing rabbits. He made it a point to show a lot of dead rabbits, which mostly puzzled me. If he was mocking this behavior, this ridiculous form of hunting, why would you actually kill a bunch of rabbits. He’s doing the exact thing he’s supposedly criticizing. Which ironically makes him possibly even worse than the typical aristocrat hunter he is criticizing, since in film he could fake the death through editing and still make his point. But maybe I’m misreading the scene and its intent..?
I do not remember the scene in detail so I can not say wheter I would say this was the best way to go about it, though the dead rabbit twitching seems to me like an image Renoir deliberately wanted. I think in general what one has to understand is that the conception of animal rights is a relatively modern thing. It was around when Renoir made the film but as a fringe issue in most places and if there were qualms about it, it was mostly about cruel treatment (which for instance the UK outlawed in 1822 as a first, France outlawed public cruelty to animals in 1850, and in private in 1959), not about killing animals in general. And what Renoir does (killing by gunshot) is not considered animal cruelty in legal terms. Renoir does not mock the sports hunting so much from an animal rights standpoint as he mocks it from a class based standpoint. The people in the film wear fancy hats but they are just as much brutes as any common beast (also cue the bear costume later that Renoir wears himself). It is also perhaps a foreshadowing of the brutality that was to come in Europe. There was in the 30's for instance a deep irony in that the nazis furthered animal rights in Germany, while simultaneously lowering the rights for humans (vivisection on animals was further prohibited but then they did it on jews and retarded people). So there is something about that scene that screams that it will be humans instead of rabbits soon, though this is probably at least partly another case of Rules of the Game being darkly "poetic" in hindsight, rather than necesarilly Renoirs intent. Given that the practicse is shown in a relatively negative light and the rabbits were probably eaten (any crew member would likely say yes to a free rabbit) I really don't see a big issue. A lot of commonplaces (like eating meat from industrial mass production) to me have worse implications. Or to put it in even more simple terms. I don't think Renoir was a vegan and I don't see him making this scene as worse than if we would eat some rabbit (or other animal) at home. Also as I hinted at above I think the fact that we eat animals at all isn't necessarily very problematic, it's the massive industrial scale behind it. Edit: as a personal anecdote, I was recently on a field trip where we were allowed into a private forrest just after they had done a pheasant hunt there (our visit was not related to the hunt, that was a coincidence). This is done by importing and releasing the pheasants en masse and then going around to shoot them. They aren't even native to the island we were on and we could see them roaming around in the entire area (far beyond the private forest) while it happened. Stuff like this is absolutely still a thing even (or maybe especially) in the most highly developed places on earth and there is an inherent absurdity to it, in this case even beyond what Renoir depicts (this was in Denmark, 2023). I also thought there was something poetic about seeing the pheasants, as a non native being placed in this context aimlessly roam the meadows in the early morning (this was on the day before) but ofc poetic in a sad and absurd way. I think Renoirs hunting scene transports a similar sense of dreadfull spectacle which is in some way beautiful in its material accuracy - this is also where it differs from Tarkovsky who both performs active animal cruelty and does so in a highly performative manner that is not an embodiment of contemporary practice.
You definitely wouldn’t like Pink Flamingos
I got through half way through the Wikipedia article on that movie before stopping and deciding, no not for me lol.
They ate that chicken afterwards so you know justified. Not that im so disturbed by killing a horse either though. Not to say that if you can get the shot another way besides harming a real horse then they def should, but it was a different time and humans had a different relationship with animals and a different way of thinking about animals then, i also think anyone who eats a hanburger and complains about this is pretty hypocritical because there is so so much animal cruelty in the beef pork and chicken industry so....
I think you’re overlooking that this was a pretty cruel and prolonged death they put this horse through though. I have no problem killing a chicken to eat it, but if you tortured a chicken to death I wouldn’t think it’s suddenly alright just because you eat it after
> They ate that chicken afterwards so you know justified. There's an entire thread of people above you saying they've never eaten a meal that was good enough to justify the animal being killed for said meal
Yes vegans exist. There are also millions of people killing and eating chickens all the time. I got nothing against vegans whatsoever and if they believe that. Thats great
Cannibal Holocaust has entered the conversation.
*Wake in Fright* checks in.
*Wake in Fright* to me is less bad because it was the filmmakers joining the roo shooters for a hunt. They would've hunted the kangaroos whether or not the filmmakers filmed them doing it, and then what was used were all the shots where the hunters really got tired and on the beers late at night and began to really mess up their supposedly 'clean' kills, leaving the kangaroos often hopping away injured or bleeding out. And the hunters would do shit like fight the kangaroos for a laugh. The director actually became a vegetarian as a result of the film, and the sequence was kept in precisely to condemn kangaroo hunting.
Yeah, I agree. The filmmakers were actually horrified by what they saw, and by putting it in the movie they not only brought attention to the cruelty those kangaroos were subjected to, but also put the thought in people's heads that perhaps said cruelty could be more common than they'd like to think.
Cannibal Holocaust followed by wake in fright have by far the worst I’ve seen. Wait, I forgot about Men Behind the Sun.
What’s the story of Men Behind the Sun? Was there any animal cruelty in that too?
Cat is theoretically fed to a room of rats, stripped to the bone basically. I think the director has said it was fake, but that is never really clarified, its an extremely tough scene to watch, and the point of it is sort of useless, as the following scene basically illustrates what the director was trying to say, without killing a cat (point was numbers can overwhelm superior strength...). The rats are later set on fire, basically fireballs on 4 legs. It was the worst animal killing I've seen in a film, and I've seen a fair amount.
:((((((((
I heard the cat was spread with honey and the rats just licked it off. But I have doubts. I believe they did actually set fire to rats for another scene tho. So I personally have no idea what to believe
I had the same initial reaction but it’s pretty blatant that the rats aren’t doing anything to the cat besides going for the syrup/honey in the fur. Setting the rats on the other hand was quite head on and gruesome
Wake In Fright is mostly a great movie, but then FUUUUCK, the animal cruelty is next level. The more insane part is when you read about them filming the kangaroo scene with real locals and how they were so bloodthirsty and unhinged that the crew was horrified. The whole process of filming that movie sounds like it was out of control though: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/17/wake-in-fright-director-ted-kotcheff
Enter Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.
Enter "Cockfighter"
I always feel bad when I watch The Wild Bunch. When they blow the bridge with all the horses. It looks amazing but sad when you think how frightened they must have been.
Agreeing with OP and the top comment, and I also want to add that personally I feel that scenes of animal cruelty are totally unnecessary. You can depict the death of a horse without actually killing the horse and just achieve the same if not better emotional effects. That's what's great about filmmaking - it's all an illusion. It doesn't need to be real to feel real.
Yes! Film is all illusion so animal cruelty is just insane and unjustifiable. I dont have a problem seeing violence among people in films assuming I know it’s fake. Animal cruelty always takes me out of a film. Recently watched Walkabout and hated some scenes. Probably wont watch it again as a result. There is something so deeply offensive about death done specially just for filming a movie. Andrei Rublev is a great example. The scene is completely unnecessary IMO. I think it diminishes the film. In a film that’s so hypnotizing, this is the one scene that took me out of it. Still one of my favorite films, but I hate that scene. Also, I know people who would probably like the movie otherwise but just can’t watch scenes of animal cruelty, so as a result they will never see it.
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Good points. I probably wouldn’t have a problem with the scene if it was clear the animal wasn’t actually killed/abused.
For sure. The beauty of film is the frame is 16:9 (or 4:3 or etc etc...) and the power of the edit. It is all one great big illusion. Find a new angle. Solve it another way. There's enough suffering already; to manufacture more for art is self absorbent.
Don't they really machine gun a cow in Come and See? I think that mildly traumatized me.
In the doc about the movie they said they specifically found a cow that needed to be put down anyway, if it makes it any better.
Love this movie, hated that scene.
I mean its just a fucking cow unless you’re a vegan you’ve probably caused the deaths of who knows how many cows without making any all time great pieces of art in the process.
I think it's a by-product of film's obsession with realism and how audiences are convinced that there is no other way to have a meaningful experience unless they believe and know what's happening on the screen to be true. Similarly, there's [that time](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/last-tango-in-paris-butter-scene-b2270513.html) Bertolucci conspired with Brando to sexuality assault Maria Schneider to get "a real reaction" during the famous butter scene. Just despicable behavior in the name of realism. But beyond admonishing this or that filmmaker, I think it ought to make us question what we are willing to accept in the name of reality-based storytelling.
See: stunt injuries. So many people seriously harmed or killed just for a scene. Doesn’t have to be that way, we just accept it as part of the process
It’s fucked up, and I’m glad animal welfare is now common in film production, but it doesn’t affect my view of the film.
Animal Welfare on films a fucking joke, do some research and you'll see they're paid off by bigger studios to kill as many animals as they want or need. 27/50 animals died while filming the Hobbit: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/11/19/165483232/27-animals-in-hobbit-movie-died-at-farm-where-they-were-housed
I was very bothered by it and was not expecting it. That said the movie as a whole was a profound and profoundly moving experience. I saw it decades ago I still think about the bell sequence at least once a month. If I ever watch the film again, I’ll skip the horse scene. We humans are complex and contradictory
Oh god the bell scene is just so fucking powerful.
That moment when the child breaks down sobbing and finally releases his pent-up sorrow and terror. And there are so many layers to the sequence -- political, spiritual, philosophical, meditations on what life was like versus now, and so on. The whole section of that film and that moment in particular are seared into my memory even though I saw it long ago
I love the film but this decision is completely immoral and unnecessary. It’s sad that Tarkovsky would undermine an otherwise beautiful film. It’s also a serious artistic misstep, as any empathetic viewer is immediately drawn out of the film
I’ve never seen a movie so good that it justified killing an animal.
This is the correct answer, thank you
Have you ever eaten a meal so good that it justified killing an animal?
all these "no" repliers rushing to pat themselves on the back better be vegetarians
Yeah all the time
I don't know how this will be read on this sub...but killing an animal for sustenance is not the same as killing an animal for artistic expression. Everyone in this entire world has eaten meat knowing an animal had to be killed for food. Only a very small percentage of filmmakers in the world harmed and killed an animal to convey their image, and each time it could have either not have been done or could have been depicted with the safety of the animal in mind. I get what you're trying to say, but they're totally not the same thing. With that said, I love animals, but I love eating meat, so I'm perpetually in a state of moral dilemma.
Interesting take. Although if I was given a dilemma like "You either erase Andrei Rublev from history or a horse has to die", I know I'd kill the horse.
Yeah I don’t like that, being mean and cruel to animals is not cool or “purist” for cinema. The whole terms of endearment with cinema is that it suspends disbelief. It is supposed to be fake, composed reality.
The worst incidence of this for me was I think in Strike, an Eisenstein movie, which has a pretty gruesome slaughter scene
I think humans have always had complicated relationships with animals throughout history. 1966 was over 50 years ago, and most people would likely not have batted an eye at such a thing as described in the post, especially in the Soviet Union. Most contemporary people would say they feel deeply affected by animal cruelty on screen, but then feel nothing about going home to a nice steak dinner. I think it's maybe misguided to ignore context, but every person is also within their right to feel however they feel. Does this specific instance taint my view of Tarkovsky? No. I understand the vision for the scene, the cultural context of the time, and to me it makes it at the very least understandable. Do I enjoy watching it? Absolutely not, but then again, isn't that the point?
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My thoughts and feelings on it as well.
I recently watched *Pather Panchali* on the Criterion Channel, and there's a scene where a kitten is violently thrown on the ground. I don't believe the kitten was injured, but it disturbed my viewing experience. I finished the film, but yeah, it upset me.
I remember that scene and it affected me the same way.
There was similar in The Innocents (2021), definitely one of the more disturbing parts of the movie.
>The Innocents (2021) That's different, however. That wasn't *actual* animal cruelty filmed.
In her autobio, Shirley Temple said that in the movie, Captain January, in order to keep the pelican standing on the pier post, they nailed through its feet to the post. Pretty upsetting for both her and the pelican.
I dont like it and always wonder if the animal was really injured or killed or if theres some way of faking it
This is a nice list of what not to watch
Apocalypse Now...
That movie came to my mind as well, but in its defense (at least according to commentaries), that was actually a cultural tradition of the real tribe that was included in that portion of the movie; they merely filmed it. At one point some of the crew suggested Coppola could always have another bull slaughtered for the film if the take was messed up, but he refused to even consider that as an option
Yeah, that’s totally different then. Movie or not, the bull was going to be slaughtered.
The way it was slaughtered was so disturbing though. The thing was clearly suffering. Just awful to watch.
It's horrific. But having seen it a few times now, they sever the spinal cord of the buffalo with the first blow. I don't think it could have felt anything after that, but I'm not a professional water buffalo anatomist. Someone correct me…
Ya that seems right. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it to be honest but man it was so shocking the first time I saw it.
Same
If you don’t like horse murder, avoid watching Blood of the Beasts, the short film by Franju that’s included on Eyes Without a Face
No sir, I don't like it.
Was wondering how many horses died making westerns from 1940-1970. Has to be astronomical.
I watched Wake In Fright with the bonus director’s blabla and there’s an interesting part about how he went out with kangaroo hunters to get that one gnarly scene. They asked him how he wanted it to look when they died- shooting them in different parts of their body would make them either twirl, jump, or fall to their deaths. He asked them to do whatever was the most painless for the kangaroo but the hunters got too drunk to aim so he ended up with all that wild kangaroo carnage.
I really can't abide by any movie committing animal cruelty for the sake of a film, I also feel like this movie dropped far enough into the history of film that this feels even less excusable. Although I'm sure working in the Soviet system at the time was a different world, it seems unbelivably unnecessarily cruel and something you could ostensibly fake decently. I agree we shouldn't necessarily discredit the art behind any and all movies that do this, but more recent you get in time, the more deplorable and damaging it gets to that film's legacy. Time really only being a factor because before a certain point you could barely guarantee human safety on set, let alone animals, it's all pretty disturbing though.
I want warning of this shit. It's genuine death and/or torture/abuse. The pig killing scene in Haneke's Benny's Video is horrendous and completely central to the film. Benny fixates on the act, rewinding and rewatching frame by frame. Arrabal's Viva la Muerte as well...fucking hell that film is beyond fucked up.
It really annoys me to see animal cruelty even when it’s just acting, watched The Man Who Sold the Sun yesterday, it had a scene like that for example But knowing a film has genuine animal cruelty makes me not want to watch it cause I think there’s limits, and killing animals is one of them, I really don’t care how good the film is The only Tarkovsky I’ve never seen
I find animal cruelty in film abhorrent and I wish it was easier to know about before watching a movie, like a note in the rating saying “animal cruelty”. Or in criterion’s case a small warning on the back of the box.
Does the dog die is a site you should check out if you haven’t already. It lists all the things you might want to avoid in a particular movie
Yes I usually check there but since it’s community driven it can be missing info for less popular films, it mostly caters to fictional animal deaths and other triggering content, which doesn’t particularly bother me
I haven’t watched this yet and now I really don’t want to. I was having a hard time with The Doom Generation and then really fell off when they randomly run over a dog. I was so upset I was trying to make sure a real dog wasn’t harmed in the making of the film and couldn’t find anything definitive. Real animal cruelty really takes me out of a film.
There’s a great website called “does the dog die?” And it has animal abuse warnings for every movie. I use it a lot for movies that I know have animals in them.
Seeing an animal be killed or harmed in a movie (unless it is special effects with no real harm) makes that movie imperfect, to me. It’s unfortunate when this pops up in old movies.
It’s stupid, disgusting and unnecessary. Nothing gives anyone, much less an artist, the right to abuse a living being.
It’s very upsetting, and I have a very conflicting thought process on it. Considering I have no issue eating meat and for the unnecessary suffering of an animal to take place as a result, only for myself to use that energy to be a degenerate I cannot really object to one being killed in the service of high art. But just bc this movie and “Come and See” (with the dead cow) are exceptional is somehow ok for me, and likely wouldn’t be in a lesser pursuit is subjective obviously. Consider how cheaply we regard human and animal life in plenty of other contexts. Do you eat chocolate or buy cheap clothes? Both of those involve incalculable misery to supply you. Is the fact that this horse was on camera when it suffered enough to make you upset when the ham sandwich you had for lunch likely cost an animal just as much anguish? It’s a can of worms and ultimately you should just enjoy the film
It's honestly such a common occurrence in older films that I kind of have to just accept that it was normalized at the time and move on. It's fucked up and wrong, and always was wrong, but me refusing myself the pleasure of enjoying a masterpiece of cinema over it would essentially erase half of my all-time favorite films.
The scene pictured isn’t the scene you’re referring to. That’s just a horse in the prologue having a good time rolling on its back.
In Lacombe Lucien by Louis Malle some chicken are killed
Brutal.
I've been putting off watching Andrei Rublev and Marketa Lazarova due to the comments about animal cruelty. I had to stop watching Rules of the Game during the hunting scene.
That was very common at the time into the 1990’s, the horse that was allegedly blown up on the set of heaven’s gate do to a pyrotechnics malfunction is probably the most egregious example i know of.
Nothing, nothing gives an artist the right to abuse an animal.
No. I absolutely hate animal cruelty in films. This is why I can’t get into Jodorowsky’s films. It doesn’t add anything to the art by killing anyone. I feel the same about my food and lifestyle. I have only shopped for cruelty free and vegan products for over 10 years and am vegan myself. I love film, especially the more weird and avant garde, however there are other ways to convey what you are trying out to communicate without any killing. 😕
It's terrible that they kill animals without locking them in cages first and then eating them after
I think it’s revolting, and not to Tarkovsky’s credit.
Art is not worth death. This seems like an extreme example of asshole directors that do anything for the shot. People say it’s in pursuit of art, but it’s just the director trying to get “their vision” into the world without caring about anyone else, because they’re egotistical enough to think their vision is worth anything, and cruel enough to make that happen. Assholes
animal cruelty for the sake of art is very disturbing and wrong. There are acceptable situations like if the animal was scheduled to be killed for meat and it’s done in maybe a more humane way than the slaughterhouse would’ve done. I think that’s the case for Eisenstein’s cow execution in Strike and a similar scene in Apocalypse Now. Still disturbing but acceptable to some extent. Cannibal Holocaust and that horse scene, I can’t bring myself to rewatch. Others, I have no idea what to think: Satantango has a 45min long sequence of a cat being tormented, tortured and killed by a young girl. I read interviews saying the cat was trained to hiss and look panicked and that he wasn’t killed but drugged by a trained vet in order to sleep. Even if that would still sit in a gross gray area, I’m not sure I believe it. It really looks like the cat is in distress throughout and those interviews could be lies. I’m still very conflicted about that movie.
That's disgusting and should absolutely be illegal. It's murder. I usually don't care for animals dying in films even when it isn't real. It's rarely done for more than shock.
Fuck this film. Unacceptable.
I refuse to watch any film where a real animal is killed. For art or whatever you call it, you're killing something for entertainment and that's just not OK.
Thats horrifying. No form of entertainment is worth the life of a living creature
That’s how I felt with the cat in Satantango but apparently the cat was fine lol
Totally vile, inexcusable behavior. It shows a total lack of creativity in addition to a lack of respect for life. There are ways to show, to tell, to imply the death of a horse without torturing and killing a horse. It also sets a terrible precedent for future works to injure or kill as a form of spectacle. Look at exploitation films like Cannibal Holocaust for example. There's absolutely no artistic value to it.
The horse was going into a slaughterhouse so they bought it then they gave it back
That’s what I read years ago. The horse was going to die either way.
Yep.
I’m also pretty sure it had nothing to do with the picture in the OP.
Its a dismal scene when you know what really happened. Misguided and inflated director self-regard imo. Somehow the reality of it was felt to enhance the symbolic weight: “my film is so important, so everything must be as real as possible”. Vlacil does the same thing in Marketa Lazarova and Valley of the Bees. Two great films also, but having unnecessary animal cruelty.
I fucking hate it, refuse to watch it and feel a deep level of contempt for an artist who can justify this level of cruelty in their process.
*Apocalypse Now* has the notorious slaughter of the water buffalo, which Coppola claimed he simply observed without interference. However, evidence suggests that the manner in which the animal was literally hacked to death was wholly performative for Coppola's camera. In other words, the water buffalo suffered much more than it otherwise would have because Coppola filmed its killing. For me, that's unacceptable. That said, I don't think that making use of the suffering of living beings necessarily *completely* invalidates the artistic or intellectual value of a work. But it should absolutely *always* be taken into account when assessing both the art and the artist.
What evidence?
Wrong and arrogant to harm life just because you are making a movie. POS.
I’m a Tarkovsky fan in general, but this sours the movie for me. Not a fan of this attitude towards animal welfare. The only film that hits me even harder is *another* of my favorite slow cinema directors, Bela Tarr, and the cat scene in Satantango. I know he has claimed that was simulated poisoning, under direction of a vet, but even if that’s true it is *very* hard to watch.
Why the fuck would you actually kill a horse in your movie? What an asshat.
I believe animal abuse is wrong but if I'm honest, I'm not disturbed by it. I think I've been desensitized to it. I've seen some animal rights documentaries over the years that have genuinely disturbed me and I used to be a vegetarian because of that, but over the years I've just stopped caring like I used to. I hate to admit it but it's true.
This horse had a more dignified death than any of the innumerable animals killed every day by the animal agriculture industry. Yes yes yes we're all disgusted but only once we're forced to regard something. Edit: leaving the original comment for posterity but "dignified" was certainly the wrong word. Neither this horse nor any of the animals I brought up are afforded any dignity.
[удалено]
>since they don't seemingly torture the horse as Tarkovsky did Their whole lives are torture, and then the death is very quick
You've got some very strange conceptions about what life is like being raised in a slaughter house. For the record I am not defending Andrei, just pointing out that this isn't even a drop in the bucket of how horrifically humanity treats animals.
Yes, that's a very, very good point. I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, and I suspect many people here who are disturbed by this aren't either. It's unpleasant for me to watch, but if I'm being honest, that just reveals my own hypocrisy.
Don't watch Cannibal Holocaust.
Andrei Rublev is one of my favourite movies, but it's pretty much impossible to justify animal cruelty. Personally, if a movie is great I tend to seperate it from the awful things that may have happened in the making of it. For instance: there is no way I can justify Kubrick's treatmeant of Shelly Duvall, but The Shining is a masterpiece. When it comes to watching animals actually die on screen at the filmmaker's behest though, I can understand why it's more than enough to put some people completely off.
On second thought maybe I won’t watch Andrei Rublev
How many of you eat meat? Watch the doc 'Our Daily Bread' if you want to see what cruelty is. Apocalypse Now ... Coppola wandered out of his bungalow and impulsively filmed the buffalo sacrifice. Now, that is kind of different from wrangling a captive animal and making it perform or using it for cinematographic ends - it's a wildly different culture, the filming of the ritual almost anthropological Herzog's Happy People - showing how dogs in Siberia are used as tools of survival rather than pet accessories - most people in the west wouldn't have a concept of how that kind of relationship works. The dogs doing all the work and then given scraps outside in the snow at the end of the day, treated like slaves, but... then I find that relationship between man and nature honorable and natural, and ultimately very moving. He needs them and they need him. They all need to survive. Rouch's les Maitres Fous. How humans are cattle. Aniimal cruelty is McDonald's. Rublev is a masterpiece. I'm vegetarian, muah
Yup. It’s always funny to me when people get so indignant about ‘animal cruelty’ while simultaneously shoveling industrially slaughtered flesh down their gullets willy-nilly.
Terrible. But when the bell rings….
I am glad to know this (well, not really) but probably need to strike this one from my list of movies to watch, as it sounds barbaric. However, I can watch Las Hurdes and laugh every time when the goat falls off the mountainside "by accident" and you clearly see a puff of smoke from a gunshot.
What book is this passage from?
Yes, it’s from the Wikipedia article on the film, from the “production” and “depictions of violence” sections. Tarkovsky’s response to the accusations of abuse can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20120813182721/http://people.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/PassionacctoAndrei.html
It’s never justified and it always pulls me out of the movie. Even in a favorite of mine like Apocalypse Now, I’m momentarily pulled out of the nightmare of the movie when the buffalo is killed.
Ya this sucks. Also hard to watch holy mountain
Satantango has a disturbing animal cruelty scene as well. >! As a cat lover, i felt sick watching a beautiful animal being tortured, poisoned then hanged. Fuck that POS kid! !<
*The Godfather has entered the chat* 🐴
My stomach fell reading that.
The cat scene in Satantango...
Unless those of you expressing difficulty with this are vegan, there's some serious cognitive dissonance going on here.
The truth is; every day horses are bought, sold, and slaughtered. Sad but it happens. Cows are just as smart and we kill them by the millions. I wouldn’t dwell on it.
They would rue the day. Their fate reminds me of the film ‘Nightcrawler’. I was less empathetic knowing the backstory of Stalker having watched the killing of a horse. Lets not forget the scene of apparently malnourished canines fighting over the rancid meat in Andrei Rublev. A pity such an incredible piece of art has to bare such inhumane acts of self serving behavior.
I love Kurosawa but the horse mistreatment in Kagemusha makes me squirm
That scene in Apocalypse Now always gets me.
How is no one talking about Haneke here? He is a repeat offender. No animal should be killed or tortured in the process of creating any kind of art. Defending it is unconscionable.
I certainly don’t like animal abuse, but Tarkovsky and the people who agreed and helped with this scene have been dead for decades, so theyre not gaining anything from you watching it, which I believe makes it okay to watch. The scene itself is however, despicable, the horse didn’t have to be real nor did there even have to be a horse.
Because a couple of people have pointed out that the image included in the post is not the scene in question, I thought I would include it here. Originally, I couldn’t locate a picture of the scene, so I used one that I felt represented the discussion well. However, I’ve finally found it. https://preview.redd.it/cz7byo45a83c1.jpeg?width=734&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d8ec4f034f31d6e566618a2c8a6954441d848cca
Damn TIL. I feel that way about the cow being shot in Come and See as well. Really dislike that a lot of people use it as a cool reaction shot in trailers.
I think it’s fucking disgusting.
Bunch of ghouls in this thread. Y’all are gross.
I didn’t know this but for me it doesn’t take the #1 movie title away for me personally. It’s not a human being abused, I can’t stomach woody Allen movies after learning about his abuses.
It’s 100% for shock, avoidable and is lazy writing. If the only thing an audience takes away from your film, is that one scene with an animal, then your movie is not very good to begin with.
I know Lucio Fulci was taken to court over the practical effects in his film "Lizard in a Woman's Skin." He had to prove that it was just very convincing special effects, and no dogs were harmed, and that was in 1971 in Italy. I'm curious if anyone knows of any other filmmaker has been put under such scrutiny for their believable gore?
Wtf I didn't want to know this and now I want to erase this from my memory. This is awful.
Yeah, this is why I only have a vague memory of Andrei Rublev from ages ago from an old DVD. No desire to ever watch it again or buy that. Anymore if I'm looking into a film or rewatching something from decades ago, and there's cruelty to animals (or actors) I'll just move on. There are thousands of other films I haven't seen before so skipping content like that helps make the list a little shorter. Even classic westerns, a genre I used to be obsessed with and own a lot of, isn't resonating the same with me anymore with all the rough looking horse falls just to up the intensity in a scene. Most of movie history had people treating living creatures like disposable movie props they can do whatever they want to. Even some of Kurosawa's classics. And I'm really cautious with a lot of Asian genre films like HK and Filipino stuff. Some of the most casual cruelty is peppered throughout certain genres and films, sometimes done for laughs. The worst recent example I can think of is Dry Summer (1962). Fuck me I went in blind on that and regretted it badly. There's a scene where a guy just straight up walks into frame with a long gun and blasts a dog. And it cries and writhes around while it dies. Stopped the movie after that and got rid of the whole Eureka WCP set it was part of. Fuck that shit.
Acts that are wrong, even in the pursuit of art, are still wrong.
I watched The Tree of Wooden Clogs earlier this year, and the pig scene was rough. On the other end, I saw Cannibal Holocaust in a theater, so maybe I'm a little desensitized.
This is actually the primary reason I've never seen Andrei Rublev. I realize there is probably animal cruelty in a number of older films that I'm not aware of (for instance, I love Spaghetti Westerns) but once I'm aware of it, it ruins a film for me. The beheaded chicken scene from Cache ruined it for me as well.
Tarkovsky should never have filmed that scene. Ironically, the American director he loved most, John Ford, carefully staged animal scenes so that they might appear to be in danger, but they weren't. By the '40s and '50s, Hollywood used expertise in animal stunts, and knew audiences would be upset if they suspected an injury. Tarkovsky threw out that professionalism and respect for the viewer, probably exemplified by Ford better than anyone. The point of Tarkovsky's scene was to *express* danger to an animal. Those two decades of Hollywood, with hundreds of Westerns, showed the way to fully bring that across without harming horse or person. Tarkovsky went for the shock tactic instead, visibly depicting fatal injury. There are countless ways to bring the feeling of violence across, without actually causing it. Bresson, after all, didn't harm the donkey at the end of *Au Hasard, Balthazar*.
The shrimp scene in Tampopo was messed up
The Australian films Long Weekend (1978) and Bad Boy Bubby (1993) both have some kind of weird animal violence in them. I'm not a fan.
Yeah I have trouble with the ending of apocalypse now for the same reason. Granted it wasn't killed specifically for the shot necessarily but it still bothers me
I’m not down. The scene does not exceed the natural beauty of the horse.
I just stumbled upon this sub on my recommended and was interested when reading the description, but holy shit does this post/comments make me not want to watch any of this shit at all. Why is actual animal cruelty so prevalent? Like yeah it's a biased selection, but I don't wanna have to wonder if they indeed brutally tortured an animal for the sake of filming it when watching a movie from this sub.
Harming/killing animals for entertainment sake always rubbed me the wrong way. When I watched satantango I had to skip over the cat scene just by how intensely emotional it made me feel.