Tag: HAR: Language/Communication
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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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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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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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Me and You and Everyone We Know. Dir. Miranda July. IFC Films. 2005
Me and You and Everyone We Know – fish scene Goldfish have been domesticated by humans for thousands of years, and Me and You and Everyone We Know invites an engrossing encounter with the sea animal as it appears in a plastic bag swaying on top of a fast-moving car. This clip of a fleeting…
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Every Which Way but Loose. Dir. James Fargo. Warner Bros. 1978.
James Fargo’s 1978 film Every Which Way but Loose follows Clint Eastwood’s character Philo Beddo and his orangutan companion Clyde in their search for love. The audience’s expectations of human-animal relationships depicting docile animals who are human playthings are immediately subverted by Philo’s interactions with Clyde, the orangutan. Clyde throughout the film is given a freedom not…
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Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Dir. Raja Gosnell. Walt Disney Pictures. 2008.
In Beverly Hills Chihuahua, the superiority and entitlement of animals are used as tropes to represent Chloe the chihuahua and her furry friends’ authority over Rachel, Chloe’s dogsitter. This is captured within the pool party scene through the decision to construct dominant representations of the dogs and represent Rachel, the human, as an inferior servant…
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Lamb. Dir. Valdimar Jóhannsson. Sena. 2021
Like a lamb to the slaughter, the slow-burn, absurd surrealness of A24’s Lamb (2021) leads the audience to an end that blends both chilling twists and heartbreaking loss as the complications that are inevitable with blurring binaries between human-animal relations come to fruition. In a playful, sardonic reconfiguration of oppositions between captivity and freedom, wildness…
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Ant-Man. Dir. Peyton Reed. Marvel Studios. 2015.
‘You’ve yet to learn about your greatest allies: the ants. Loyal, brave, and your partners on this job.’ As you’ve undoubtedly predicted from the title, ants play a huge role in Marvel’s Ant-Man[1] (2015). Master burglar Scott Lang, recently released from prison, is determined to cease his criminal ways so he can become a proper…