Category: Year: 2013
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Ostwind. Dir. Katja von Garnier. Constantin Film. 2013.
Ostwind follows the troubled teenager Mika as she is sent to her grandmother’s horse farm to study and help around the stables. Instead of helping, Mika hides in the stables and meets Ostwind, the horse responsible for Mrs. Kaltenbach’s riding injury. During their first encounter, Mika instantly feels connected to Ostwind and learns about the gift…
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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,…
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Enemy. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. E1 Films. 2013.
Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy follows Adam, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, a history professor, disillusioned with life and suffering from a feeling of social malaise, and Anthony, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, a wannabe actor who regularly cheats on his pregnant wife. Adam sees Anthony as an extra in a movie and becomes obsessed with him. Anthony is eventually killed…
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Enemy. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. E1 Films. 2013.
Warning – Pictures of Spiders, if you hate spiders, stop reading now! Final Warning! The final scene of Enemy is the culmination of the spider motif that runs throughout the movie. Adam/Anthony has spent the whole film trying to resolve the two sides of himself, the cheat who only cares about himself and the man who tries…
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The Wolf of Wall Street. Dir. Martin Scorsese . Paramount Pictures. 2013.
The Wolf of Wall Street is a biographical dark comedy that follows the life of criminal stock broker, Jordan Belfort. The presence of animals in the film draws attention to human-animal relationships and their differences. More specifically, this scene uses a goldfish to highlight these differences, as well as the film’s message about the greed and…
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Inside Llewyn Davis. Dir. Ethan Coen, Joel Coen. CBS Films. 2013.
Inside Llewyn Davis, is a Coen Brothers mock biopic depicting a struggling singer in 1960s New York. The film leads the central character Llewyn to question whether or not he should continue to perform music following the suicide of his singing partner, Mike. The theme of alienation reoccurs throughout the film and is reinforced by…
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Belle and Sébastien. Dir. Nicolas Vanier. Gaumont. 2013.
Belle and Sébastien is an action and adventure children’s film that touches on animal bond and servitude. During the era of German soldiers raiding French towns for Jewish refugees, the townsmen of a southern French town are hunting for a beast – Belle, a Great Pyrenees dog gone feral. They believed she was the killer…
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Belle and Sébastien. Dir. Nicolas Vanier. Gaumont. 2013.
Belle and Sébastien Synopsis It is the summer of 1943 in a small village in France and there is something disturbing the livestock of the area. Sébastian, a young orphaned boy, continues his usual wildlife exploring and accidently runs into the ‘beast’ everyone was talking about – a Great Pyrenees – whom he later names…