I was long waiting to see this movie: the black and white charm of the trailer, together with sounds of grunting, squeaking and clucking, familiar to anybody, made a refreshing impression of something different from what is usually shown in the wide release. The movie had no words or moralising, yet, when it ends one can hardly hold the tears. The plot is simple, telling a story of a sow with a litter of piglets and a few hens and cows living at a free-range farm. The camera catches their different emotions, daily joys and tragedies, which one can no longer observe once these animals reach the meat section in a grocery store. In that sense, the movie tells a story of deprived and miserable, farm animals who have no names, no voice and no right to exist in our consciousness. Their emotions are surprisingly human: curiosity of the piglets, tiredness of their mother, the will to life of the one-legged chicken, compassion of calves towards each other in defending from flies, the heartbreaking despair of the sow. The inherent unfairness of their lives vis-à-vis the lives of humans leaves a bitter feeling and a lump in the throat. It is a rare movie, which requires immersion in the dark atmosphere of a cinema, but rewards with empathy towards other beings and a warm feeling of unity with them.
Review of Gunda
