Bestiaire

Bestiaire offers a unique viewing experience where in the audience are mere spectators.

This is observational cinema or, what could perhaps be called "transcendental cinema."

In essence, we are transported from location to location, zoo to farm to zoo to animal sanctuary, without much in the way of context.

It will be a frustrating experience for many viewers but a relaxing one, for others.

For me it was an exciting journey. There is no dialogue. You are free to just enjoy the film and experience it.

There is no story, but there is undoubtedly a message here. I think the film maker is trying to tell us something about the relationship between humans and animals and, our planet.

This could be a tolerable playing-in-the-background film if it was muted. There's really not enough to make every scene interesting. The sound is minimal, but you can hear lots of door slamming and fluorescent lights buzzing. Perhaps the film maker wanted that impersonal, raw feel, but it doesn't make a film enjoyable for adult leisure time. You can hear the animals but it's not a 'nature' film. I would rather watch a narrated, colorful documentary either about animals and migration, or even their extinction. This features scenes of caged animals so you don't learn anything about them or their natural habitats. Some scenes seem to last for ten minutes with a fish bowl view of the animals and sometimes people, but nothing is happening. I can imagine for a film festival this film was OK because people could cleanse their palate between captivating films. If I was being paid as a film critic I might have been able to watch the complete film. As it was, I lasted about thirty minutes before I couldn't take anymore.

long winded, short on substance, big on intentionally poorly composed shots which, if they are meant to suggest the POV of an animal, are an insult to our 4 footed friends.

what is really most irritating about this film is the pretense at some sort of 'objectivity' (primarily through shots that give the impression nobody was looking through the camera viewfinder and editing of sequences that for large stretches simply go nowhere) which in fact is anything but - rather "Bestiare" evinces soft pedaled but nonetheless smarmy, constant clucking, moralizing, pontificating high dudgeon from first frame to last. a great effort is made to 'rigorously' dehumanize the people who participated on camera. why sure, we're stupid enough an audience to imagine the "bestiary" is run by zombies, no heavy handed manipulation there.

Something tells me that auteur and crew helped themselves to all manner of meat, fish and poultry all the days of their lives before summoning up the quiet indignation that results in a film like "bestiary". cause that would just be so typical... and a hoity toity typical typifies "Bestiare".

A glance at this director's CV and my jaw dropped at his fecundity. But if this is typical of the films he makes, they really might be cranked out at the rate of about a per week.