GUNDA | FILM REVIEW
Dir: Viktor Kosakovskiy (U, 93 mins)
A monochrome documentary about the life of a pig on a farm, together with cows and a one-legged chicken, Gunda is an immersive oddity that manages to move and unsettle. Brilliantly photographed by Kosakovskiy and Egil Haskjold Larsen, this wordless film places us at the same level of the farm animals.
Opening on Gunda, the sow who has recently given birth to a host of piglets, this charts their daily life. Scrambling together, they fight over milky teats with Gunda a seemingly indulgent parent nudging along the littlest of her offspring – a huge presence in their lives, as they gleefully follow their mother around the farmland. She is not above accidentally stepping on them, however, shown rather painfully.
We also spend time with cows joyously racing from a barn, flicking tails in each other’s faces and stomping the ground in unison, and walk through the undergrowth with that monoped chicken and his scrawny companions. The takes are long and beautifully framed, black-and-white imagery elevating the whole film to a beautiful work of art with the director focusing on the very human eyes of Gunda in particular. It is impossible not to identify with her.
As the piglets grow, their boisterousness changes until – heartbreakingly – the day comes when they are taken away. It is here that Gunda really transcends. The camera follows the sow as she searches for the children she no longer has, a distress apparent and the life-filled sty now a place of emptiness. The film has a go-slow entertainment value, which at times can feel indulgent – we become observers of the changing lives of these creatures and identify that they are not so different from us, capable of playfulness and melancholy. It’s a triumph of no-fuss storytelling, guaranteed to create vegetarians.
Out now in cinemas and via digital download
words KEIRON SELF