In some ways it is useful that films like this exist, as repellent as they are, since in time I am sure people will look back with horror and alarm to think such vile "pastimes" and "entertainments" as bull-fighting were ever allowed, much less supported, but alas, they do still exist in some parts of the world. However, this documentary is quite rightly dispassionate. You don't know where the film-maker quite stands on the issue, and this perhaps is a good thing since you are presented with the "spectacle" and left to draw your own conclusions about its ethics.
Not only are bulls seen to be tormented and tortured as they are goaded to frenzy by the matadors, but you also see how the horses in the ring are also gored and injured. You don't however see the behind the scene methods and "tricks of the trade" employed to ensure that danger to the matadors is always minimized. There is also a strange sort of macho primping and posturing to be seen in the behaviour of the men who participate, and who presumably think that by doing so they somehow augment their own sense of masculinity. Removed from the blood stained arena, their theatrics are as camp as all hell.
It was indeed a black day for mankind when the Princes of the Church decided that animals do not have souls, thus condemning them to centuries of use and abuse, and for those who feel a flush of self-righteous pomposity about this theological confirmation of their superiority, it is well to remember that at that same Council, it was also debated as to whether or not women had souls, and that decision was affirmed only by the slenderest of majorities!
This film does serve another purpose however - it proves that cruelty depraves and corrupts, which was evidenced by the fact that even I almost stood on my seat and cheered with Sadean frenzy when a bull's horn managed to lance a matador through the thigh, and then ran pell-mell around the arena for several minutes with his body hanging free as if wearing a crazy bonnet! (The impulse I felt was wrong, but, nobody's perfect!).
It is also valuable to demonstrate mankind's fatal propensity for having to constantly "prove" they are The Lords of Creation" by treating practically every other creature that lives and breathes as if it were made solely for their use and pleasure. Count me out on that one, because if animals ain't got souls, then I don't want one neither!
