For a subject not often given an artistic treatment, barnyard animals, Gunda is exquisitely shot. In a loving way, it shows that pigs, cows, and chickens have emotions, that they enjoy being alive, and that they have dignity. I loved it for that, and if just looking at animals go about their lives on a farm is appealing to you, this is probably your film, but otherwise, you might find its 93 minutes passing rather slowly.
There is clearly an underlying message here, but I loved how restrained the film was in getting this across. It was filmed at humane farms and sanctuaries, without narration of any kind, and that includes holding back from the customary text at the end of documentaries which fill us in on various facts and details. The viewer is left to connect the dots from the images on the screen to what was on their dinner plate most recently, or the neat cuts of packaged meat in the grocery, seen as commodities instead of living creatures. The scene where the mother pig frantically searches for her babies towards the end is distressing, but a far more damning portrayal of the cruelty of the meat industry would have been at a factory farm, and/or a slaughterhouse. In other words, this is just the tip of an enormous, immoral iceberg - and yet if taking babies away from a mother doesn't hit you in the gut, I'm not sure what will.
There is clearly an underlying message here, but I loved how restrained the film was in getting this across. It was filmed at humane farms and sanctuaries, without narration of any kind, and that includes holding back from the customary text at the end of documentaries which fill us in on various facts and details. The viewer is left to connect the dots from the images on the screen to what was on their dinner plate most recently, or the neat cuts of packaged meat in the grocery, seen as commodities instead of living creatures. The scene where the mother pig frantically searches for her babies towards the end is distressing, but a far more damning portrayal of the cruelty of the meat industry would have been at a factory farm, and/or a slaughterhouse. In other words, this is just the tip of an enormous, immoral iceberg - and yet if taking babies away from a mother doesn't hit you in the gut, I'm not sure what will.