As the old adage goes “nature is red in tooth and claw” but this year’s environmental cinema focuses on a bloodier violence which is far from inevitable. The black and white slapstick comedy Hundreds of Beavers, the gory slasher In a Violent Nature and cryptid movie Sasquatch Sunset all chose to limit or entirely refrain from dialogue in order to offer strange odes to the environment which highlight humanity’s lasting impact on the natural world.
Opting for physicality over dialogue, these three films follow in the footsteps of nonverbal nature documentaries such as Victor Kossakovsky’s Gunda and Laurent Charbonnier and Michel Seydoux’s Heart of An Oak. These documentaries offer much more than simple meditative depictions of wildlife and, though at first glance are seemingly plotless, they are in fact action-packed. Gunda’s unromantic lens captures the often bleak reality of life for farm animals – the invisible omnipresent hand of agriculture infringes on those living life in captivity – while Heart of An Oak documents the thriving atmosphere of the inhabitants of the oak tree and the surrounding area occupied by its stretching roots. Broadcasting nature needs no narration here, as it offers wildly unpredictable entertainment all of its own accord. A Dean Martin needle-drop may be cliche in any other setting, but watching flies copulate to Sway is a hilarious footnote in a rousing eco-conscience film.
