TIFF 2016 Review: Safari
Those accustomed to Ulrich Seidl’s rigid, uncompromising style will find his usual brand of disturbing, funny, and strange content in Safari, his latest documentary. The Austrian director works in both fiction and nonfiction, but after finishing his Paradise trilogy he’s returned to documentary, with both this and his previous feature In the Basement. Safari feels more in line with Paradise: Hope, his first feature in the aforementioned trilogy, and not just because of its African location (Namibia and South Africa, specifically). Hope dealt with the way people exploited each other at a resort in Kenya, and Safari similarly looks at exploitation, albeit this time from a more one-sided perspective. It’s an angry film, designed to shine a light on the ugliness of hunting animals for sport, but it’s one that feels too repetitive and, for people who have seen Seidl’s previous works, familiar.
Aside from a brief opening, the film spends its time in Africa following different people on hunting vacations. They stay at a resort where they go out and slaughter animals each day. Seidl structures his film into two distinct parts he cuts between: one where he interviews different hunters, and another where he follows them out into the wilderness to kill animals. It’s in the interview sections that Seidl showcases his usual stylistic traits: impeccably framed shots, awkward interviews, and an ability to get his subjects to speak with a kind of candor that most other documentarians wouldn’t get. The best example of this comes when a couple who owns a hunting resort talk about black people having certain genetic differences from white people. “They have longer heel bones,” says the owner, explaining how that’s why black people can run faster than whites. His wife adds “When they want to,” which should say plenty about how the attitude these white, well-to-do hunters have towards race.
During the hunting scenes, Seidl focuses on the logistical aspects of the chase: setting up the mount for the rifle, making sure not to make too much noise to avoid spooking the animal, and making sure the hunter’s photo with their trophy is perfect (this usually means putting the animal’s corpse in the right pose, or removing plants that might cover up the body). At first, there’s an absurdity to watching these people put so much effort into composing such a morbid image, but then Seidl cuts away to a deliberately posed shot of the hunter showing off their kill. It’s an admission of guilt by Seidl himself, showing that he too is just as concerned with presentation, and it shows his (and the viewer’s) complicity in observing these brutal murders.
It’s one of the few moments where Safari feels legitimately challenging, as the rest of the film feels too relaxed in its detached look at the brutality of this particular hobby. Seidl is no stranger to shock, so it’s not a big surprise that he films the resort’s workers skinning, beheading, and butchering the animal carcasses, leaving nothing to the imagination. Those scenes alone (especially one involving a giraffe) will infuriate those who already see the pointlessness of hunting for sport, but it all feels like an unnecessary repetition of the same major points Seidl makes throughout. By the end, Safari doesn’t really provoke a strong reaction; instead it generates a kind of indifference reflective of Seidl’s now tiring style.
Rating: 5.5
