Gunda – Merely Well-Intentioned Norwegian Twaddle

Gunda is a documentary that traces the birth of several piglets and the lives they live with their mother. They are expected to serve as food for humans and spend their lives being taken care of, only to prepare for death at a young age. Their mother’s nurturing approach to raising them is viewed through a positive lens and we see how the behaviour of animals can mirror the behaviour of human beings. The lives of two sturdy cows and a disabled chicken are also covered. Though they receive less screen time the film still asks viewers to feel compassion and pity for them. It essentially tries to make an argument against exploiting animals for products that humans consume. 

Gunda is a film that was merely too drawn out and eventually felt like pretentious twaddle. That being said, it is a very well-shot documentary that has earnest intentions when it comes to spreading its message. Those are both positive things and it would be mean to criticise Kossakovsky for his noble intentions. It just didn’t need to be stretched out to 93 minutes. Though many will surely argue that it manages to cover a great deal of thematic ground during its brief runtime. However, it ended up feeling a little bit slight. 

While Kossakovsky doesn’t bring any new points to the table, he also takes so long to make them. There is nothing revelatory about the sight of farm animals being sweet and having meaningful familial relationships. In the end, that lack of novelty makes for a very tedious experience. Once that tedium sets in, one might feel guilty for not appreciating the beauty of the images but it’s perfectly reasonable to want to see something new every few minutes. Meanwhile, the black and white cinematography gives Gunda a patina of class and Joaquin Phoenix’s stamp of approval will sell it to those people who think that Hollywood actors are somehow more principled than we are. One would assume that Phoenix was impressed by the sight of the incredibly textured images of the piglets huddling close to their mother. It’s hard to blame him for that and people who go into this looking for beautiful imagery, won’t be disappointed.

The lack of stimulation in Gunda is likely to keep viewers at a distance from it. Slow cinema has never been a personal favourite thus one can’t help but wonder why filmmakers couldn’t have achieved the same effect without putting the audience through a certain amount of boredom and fame. Maybe their goal is to torture viewers for some reason therefore it is hard to see how anybody could sit through a film like this without feeling the desire to doze off.

Perhaps the film critics of the world will love Gunda because its message is so ‘important’, and yet this reviewer doesn’t feel compelled to go along with the opinion of the majority of critics and go against the grain which isn’t a good feeling.

still courtesy of Elevation Pictures

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Zita Short

I am passionate about screwball comedies from the 1930s and certain actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I’ll aim to review new Netflix releases and write features, so expect a lot of romantic comedies and cult favourites.