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A poetic French wildlife documentary that doesn't celebrate the magic of any brave man capturing and controlling "nature", but focuses more on how nature gazes at us.
Vincent Munir (left) and Sylvan Tysson (right) wait in the snow for wildlife to emerge.
The new documentary The Velvet Queen (2021), co-authored by French director Marie Amiguet and polar nature photographer Vincent Munier (1976), is set in the tibetan plateau, where they capture a pack of wolves swooping down on a herd of yaks from an extremely distant mountaintop a few minutes before the film begins. Despite the large number and size of the yak, six wolves grabbed one of the calves and surrounded it as the herd dispersed, and an outlier,presumably a mother cow, watched from a few yards away and refused to leave. What a brutal and extremely beautiful scene, even more haunting when combined with music by Australian musicians Warren Ellis (1965) and Nick Cave (1957).
The yak running in Snow Leopard Queen.
Such depictions of animal invasions reflect what traditional wildlife documentaries do best: imposing human eyes on natural landscapes and explaining something of emotional value. And our desire to hunt and capture animals is more like a proponent of the glorious position of human nature. Herman Melville (1819-91, American novelist) of Moby Dick (1819-91), an ocean-themed novel published in 1851 about Captain Ahab chasing and killing beluga whales, has repeatedly said, "For me, there is an eternal charm to distant things, and I like to sail in forbidden seas and land on wild shores." This may be the seminal contribution of the Western world's classics of the struggle between man and nature. In Herman Melville's novel, the pursuit and conquest of the "Great White Whale" is seen as a metaphor, symbolizing the great human experience of challenging nature. Although it is often extremely depraved: Western civilization defines itself through plunder and conquest. Roaming any territory overseas and claiming and reclassifying the natural world seem to be innate human rights.
There is no doubt that these attitudes have shaped the genre of nature documentaries of the past, especially those that so-called explore unknown lands or terrains. Typical examples are: some unusually rugged people bravely discover some inner transcendent beauty in the wilderness. Luc Jacquet (1967, French director) March of the Penguins (2005) and Jacques Perrin (1941, French director) Winged Migration (2001) are two of the relatively new and very profound examples. Randy Malamud (1962, American writer) wrote in his article Animals on Film: The Ethics of the Human Gaze. "In visual culture, the phenomenon of viewing animals is often based on the assumption that the viewer is a human and the animal is only the one being viewed. Animals thus become very vulnerable, and no matter what method the human observer chooses, they will be freely accessible... This view confuses eco-ethics ideologies, in which all members of an ecosystem should be interdependent and no single species is inherently privileged over others. ”
Thus, Amigai consciously subverted this asymmetry in his search for the Tibetan snow leopard from Vincent Munier. In fact, perhaps more accurately, her film depicts the story of the acclaimed wildlife photographer (Munir) who repeatedly tried unsuccessfully to find "the leopard," with the French writer Sylvain Tesson (1972) involved in the accompanying filming process and providing many philosophical insights. Instead of praising the magic of fearless humans capturing and controlling "nature," the director's shots are more concerned with how nature observes us, hiding them through disguise to avoid the tyrannical gaze of humans. One mysterious shot after another emerges — an animal named la bête by Munir and Tysson, so spectacularly integrated with its surroundings that seeing its silhouette is reminiscent of the 1990s "Magic Eye" poster. In the process of tracking the elusive snow leopard, we can encounter rock sheep, rabbits, Tibetan foxes, antelopes, pika rabbits and falcons, and as they approach us, we slowly learn to enjoy these natural wonders rather than actively approach them.
The Tibetan fox in Snow Leopard Queen who is catching pikas.
Referring to the images of animals in other previous documentaries, Mallamed wrote, "Even without a clear attempt to deceive, they may mislead the audience to make animals look too accessible and appear in front of people, distorting the fact that most animals live far away from us and that they keep themselves hidden at all times." By contrast, The Snow Leopard Queen highlights the fact that the animal kingdom is almost always so far away. The ability to camouflage can keep animals out of sight and enhance their visual range; people have to wait, search hard, before they can see a wild animal on screen. During a trekking trip, Munir shared: "As we all know, I have photographed (snow leopards) unconsciously, I didn't even realize this when I shot it, I shot it in the early morning, it disappeared into a rocky pit ... Two or three months later, I was shocked when I was browsing through one of these images of a falcon on a computer screen. Along the outline of the rock, behind it was the head of the snow leopard, which was staring at me. In this image, when I was looking at the shot of this falcon, I suddenly noticed a green-gold eye in the upper left corner, which stunned me instantly. ”
A startling scene appeared: a picture of a falcon, notice the upper left corner of the picture, the head of a snow leopard protruding slightly behind the rock, it is staring at you.
Tyson's lyrical and witty poetry also runs through much of the film's plot. He said affectionately, "The weeping of prehistoric times, every tear left behind turned into a yak... The rabbit suddenly appeared on the tip of a rock, its furry head, needle-like canine teeth and yellow eyes, even if it shone with a demonic light, it was difficult to hide its natural cuteness, and the two were so perfectly integrated. At other times, Tyson's narrative can feel heavy, as he says midway through the film, "We have to accept the depressing fact that the earth exudes human air everywhere." "But when Munir sees himself as part of nature rather than outside of nature, when viewers see images of humans coexisting with wildlife rather than trying to transcend it, it may be less frustrating."
Rabbit in Snow Leopard Queen.
Thankfully, the film doesn't have the smug vibe of survivalism that comes with many previous nature documentaries. Humility was the attitude of Amigai, Munir, and Tysson towards the expedition. After many futile attempts, they finally discovered the "Snow Leopard Queen"! A female snow leopard is enjoying an animal carcass, and the gleaming purple-red internal organs are the most striking objects in the entire movie. Munir whispered in disbelief, "I've never seen this animal before, it's so rare, it looks... It doesn't seem to care about us at all. ”
Notice the irony of this anomalous "gaze": the leopard did notice humans; it had spied on them keenly, but it had finally confirmed that the bearded humans did not matter at all. "How dare it hunt its prey in a cave so close to our ambush site." It's a talent, a talent that doesn't know where it came from. Munir's tears of excitement crystallized between his eyelashes. This is the climax of the film, the snow leopard slowly suspends its snow-covered, old and frail body on the rock, staring at the camera, the fur gradually disappearing into the background of ice and snow, and the vast white gradually obscuring all our vision. Yet we must still be in its field of vision, when it gazes aimlessly at our awe at the moment – the moment when it becomes incomparably sublime.
The snow leopard in "Snow Leopard Queen" stands on a rock.
The snow leopard in "Snow Leopard Queen" walks through the vast white snow and merges with heaven and earth.
It is in this way that The Snow Leopard Queen implores us not to explore the mysterious magnificence of nature, not to venture to conquer and claim, but to simply (or not so simply) wait for the noble and indifferent nature to discover us. At the end of the film, Tyson said, "I learned that patience is a supreme virtue, that it is the most elegant and neglected thing. It helped me fall in love with the world. ”
At a time when the new year is upon us, when the virus is sweeping the globe, and falling in love with the world may be more difficult than ever, Snow Leopard Queen has opened up a path through winter snow, a time and space that can easily be mistaken for emptiness and boredom. Gently and deliberately relinquishing control and leaving more room for the future may be the highest goal we can strive for right now. As Tyson says in the final scene of the film, "Be in awe of what is in front of you; don't hold out any hope; be happy with what's coming; have faith in poetry; be content with the world; and be patient for the sake of poetic existence." ”
The Snow Leopard Queen (2021, documentary). Directed by: Mary Amiguet, Vincent Munir; starring Vincent Munir, Sylvan Tyson.
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This article is originally created by the public account [ABAGo] manager Happy Big Fat
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