SAFARI (2016) de Ulrich Seidl

“It’s a deliverance for them”

I had liked put myself in front of the screen in the same situation that I do it with “Im Keller (In the Basement)”, with any information about the movie. One more time I was in Aragon Cinema in Valencia, the machinery of my prejudices plays with my mind. I know the way to do films of this great Austrian director and the title is very eloquent.

Any way, I wanted, wished, that this film heads-on crash with my way of thinking. I really, want that this film destroys them. I wish that make me change my mind in something good about this topic. I must admit that it is difficult to discuss about hunting in Africa without taking sides, without any ethical implications, but Ulrich Seidl got it. He exposes this topic without any judgments. He shows like two groups of Austrian tourists enjoy their vacancies in Africa hunting animals. He doesn’t justify them, he doesn’t garnish, either sweeten. It is completely honest, it is all that is and is a lot of. In my experience like a spectator of documentaries I observe that always the director try to convince the spectator about something or against to something. I thank this stark and transparent honesty.

The scheme is typical, two parts: one of them is the follow-up of the tourists during the hunting days and the another with interviews. Both are constructed for show it. It isn’t a spy camera in any moment we have this sensation. We can note this specially in the interviews, in there all is symmetry. If we can cut the picture in the screen and bend in the middle, we can take two equal halves. It is such artificial, such measured that not only the spectator note this, that is the director intention. The lack of soundtrack isn’t for make realer is the lack of sugar.

And, finally, a reflexion, and argument without any potential refutation, the owner of the hunting ground “human being is a cancer in this planet, he has overexploited and overcrowded”. It is a little treason in her honesty to put the human being in his place, the wort od the animals.