Gunda: A pig’s-eye view of the world
In the documentary Gunda, a mother pig and her piglets are the central characters. By keeping it simple, the film’s director Viktor Kossakovsky, grants viewers an intimate view into the life of a pig. Photo source: Egil Haskjold Larsen/Sant & Usant
The opening scene of Gunda focuses on the film’s namesake—the mother pig who is central to this movie. For over a minute we watch Gunda rest in the doorway of her wooden shelter, unmoving, before several squealing piglets suddenly emerge to join her.
In that single minute, however, there’s a lot to take in. While we watch Gunda, our attention is drawn to her gentle, heavy breathing, the birds chirping in the background, and the minute movements of her ears as they flick back and forth in her sleep. As Gunda rests, we rest along with her.
Directed by Viktor Kossakovsky and produced by Joaquin Phoenix, the film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February of 2020 and has won acclaim for its “captivating” filmmaking.
Gunda, a 2020 film directed by Viktor Kossakovsky and produced by Joaquin Phoenix is a film about farm animals. It captures the day-to-day lives of a sow and her piglets, a few cows, and a flock of chickens. But to watch these animals for the length of the movie, which runs 90 minutes, is a near-profound experience.
Kossakovsky and Phoenix are both vegans, well known for airing their concerns about the ethics of eating animals and the vast amount of land and resources required to raise meat for slaughter. But Gunda is not a film with a story line or explicit message. It doesn’t tell us what to think or force veganism upon us. Instead, it artfully presents us with truths about these animals and their lives, and leaves us to draw our own conclusions.
Filmmaking here has been stripped to its barest essentials. Kossakovsky found Gunda on a farm not far from Oslo, and once he had “cast” her, he recreated her enclosure in such a way that he could film her daily interactions with her piglets without disturbing them.
The entirety of Gunda is filmed in black and white and has no soundtrack. The camera films low to the ground, placing us on the same level as the animals we watch. Without color or background music to distract us, we are left to focus on light, on imagery defined simply by its outlines, and on the sounds recorded during filming—the breathing of pigs and chickens, the distant chirps of birds, and the rustle of grasses as cows graze.
The animals are simply allowed to exist, and we’re allowed to accompany them. It’s extraordinary filmmaking that manages to create a shared experience between the viewer and the animals. “For me,” says Kossakovsky, “the essence of cinema is showing, not telling.”
The black-and-white imagery that makes up Gunda creates an insightful, authentic glimpse into the lives of these animals. (Photo source: Egil Håskjold Larsen/Sant & Usant)
At the end of the film we are finally exposed to the tragic way in which our agricultural system makes use of these animals as food. Though we’re not exposed to graphic or troubling footage, I felt the impact of these scenes as keenly as if I had seen the inside of a slaughterhouse. As I watched the drawn out final scene, Gunda’s discomfort became my own because we’d already shared so much. Witnessing her anguish seems to take a very long time.
Although I found myself wishing for more context at the end of the film—maybe a couple of lines in the credits about the origins of these farm animals, their fate, or the setting in which they were filmed—I realized that more context might have made the film less truthful. Had I known more about how the movie was staged or filmed, it might have felt less authentic.
Gunda may not tell you what to think, but its ability to insert you into the lives of the animals it films will most likely change your understanding of these animals on screen. And once you are presented with the truths about these animals, as captured by the camera lens, it is up to you to decide what choices you want to make about your own eating habits.
As I watched Gunda suffer in the final scene of the film, my convictions about the harmfulness of animal farming, even farming that might technically be considered humane, only became stronger.
“I have always wanted to make a film about the creatures with whom we share the earth, a film about animals as living, feeling beings in their own right, '' says Kossakovsky. “I wanted to make a film without patronizing or humanizing them, without any sentimentality, and without vegan propaganda.”
Gunda, with its lack of preachiness, might just be the most compelling way to convey a message about the high cost of eating animal products, and all without using a single word.
Anna McCormack is a Stone Pier Press News Fellow based in Riverside, CT.