Category: Animal Agency
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The Little Prince. Dir. Mark Osborne. Paramount Pictures. 2015
“One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” In The Little Prince the depiction of foxes defies conventional animality as they generally symbolise perfidy. But The Fox here is characterised as holding pragmatic intellectual power. He is a teacher but does not hold any other forms of power,…
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The Future. Dir. Miranda July. Roadside Attractions (US). 2011
The title of the film, The Future, is emblematic of the very thing the characters fear, what is the unknown. July certainly lets the cat out of the bag as she reveals her inner monologue through the narration of an anthropomorphic feline. The cat plays a central role in the drama, as it begins with…
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Mr Popper’s Penguins. Dir. Mark Waters. 20th Century Fox. 2011.
Jim Carrey and Penguins. It does not get any better. Think Beethoven but with Penguins. Try to spot the difference between the CGI penguins and the real ones. Grab the popcorn. As you can surmise from the title, the film details Mr Popper who is played by Jim Carrey and his hijinks with the penguin…
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Kubo and the Two Strings. Dir. Travis Knight. Laika. 2016
Figure 1: Kubo lifted in the air by wings made of origami birds. Kubo and the Two Strings follows a boy whose life is made even more extraordinary when a perilous adventure, which his mother has tried to save him from, accidentally finds him. Kubo can tell stories using the magical music of his shamisen…
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Hoodwinked!. Dir. Edwards, Cory. Kanbar Entertainment, Blue Yonder Films. 2005.
A retelling of the folktake Little Red Riding Hood as a police procedural, using backstories to show multiple characters’ points of view.[1] Hoodwinked! follows the classic who dunnit trope, deconstructing the fable of Little Red Riding Hood with a modern twist to narrate the mystery of the Goody bandit. It entertains basic animal stereotypes to translate the…
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Song of the Sea. Dir. Tomm Moore. StudioCanal. 2014
Song of the Sea is full of magic, mystery and mayhem. Ben, a ten year old Irish boy, discovers that his mute sister Saoirse is a selkie. After Saoirse’s true nature is revealed, her father, blinded by fear, retaliates and hides the coat that enables her to transform. This separation causes Saoirse to fall ill.…
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Mason’s Rats. Dir. Carlos Stevens. Netflix. 2022.
“Like World War fucking IV.” The Love, Death and Robots’ episode, Mason’s Rats, centres around conflict regarding control and the co-existence of humans and animals, specifically rats, in a world dominated by technologically advanced humans. Significantly, the identities of the two clashing forces – the rats and Mason – are used to portray the errors of internecine fighting, with…
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Sing. Dir. Garth Jennings. Illumination Entertainment. 2016
Illumination Entertainment’s Sing is a computer animated film that follows a group of anthropomorphic animals taking part in a singing competition that interferes in the contestants’ privates lives, representing society and human struggles through them. In this scene, the money heist, gorillas perform mundane human tasks like singing and driving. Johnny is a large and…
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Bird Box. Dir. Susanne Bier. Netflix. 2018.
Susanne Bier’s Bird Box follows Malorie Hayes as she navigates the events and aftermath of an outbreak of creatures, which seem to take on the form of a person’s worst fear, deepest sadness or greatest loss, and thereby drive humans to suicide when the people look at them. However, the monsters themselves are never seen…
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Epic. Dir. Chris Wedge. 20th Century Fox. 2013
The mouse encounter, experienced by characters MK and Nod in the animated film Epic, displays an inversion of the relationship between human and animal. The stereotypes that form this interconnection are depicted unusually. For example typically, and importantly not in this scene, mice are considered harmless. Inversion is done via the representation of the mouse,…