Wild is used frequently to describe films, but usually for the sort of wildness befitting a toddler – loud, frenetic, unreflective. Rarer are films, like “Spoor,” that channel a deeper form of wild, the wildness of the teeming natural world that humans can never truly tame, the entropic life force forever lurking at the margins of human society and threatening to pull it apart at the seams like weeds breaking through pavement.
Directed by Polish stalwart Agnieszka Holland in collaboration with her daughter, “Spoor” takes place in a beautiful valley in rural Poland rich in wildlife. The animals are cherished by Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat), a retired engineer, part time grade school teacher, committed vegetarian, and astrology enthusiast who lives alone with two beloved dogs. But to the men of her community, including the mayor and police chief, the animals are future trophies to be captured on booze-soaked hunts, or raw material to be turned into profit, as in the case of a cruel fox-farmer. To Duszejko, the hunts are a genocide that only she can see. She wakes stricken morning after morning to the sounds of gunshots with pain etched in deep lines on her face. Just as painful is the condescension she meets whenever she complains to authorities, who clearly view her as someone to be endured, not listened to, despite only asking that existing laws be enforced. Most painful of all is when her adored dogs go missing; she suspects they fell prey to a hunter’s bullet and no men will discuss it. Thus, when her neighbor, a notorious poacher, dies with puzzling animal tracks at the scene, to Duszejko the conclusion is obvious – the animals have had enough and are striking back.
Typically, no one listens to Duszejko‘s theory, but its credibility grows as several more prominent hunters are killed under mysterious circumstances linked by an animal presence. Though Holland does plant a few clues, mostly she induces a feeling of unease, using a lush and ominous sound design and a striking visual style that immerses the viewer in the valley’s natural beauty. Holland often lets the camera survey the action from non-human vantage points – rustling through the underbrush like a dog, gliding through the air like a bird – and even when she uses more conventional camera set-ups, the intention remains of forcing the audience to view human venality through a non-human lens. For the first hour, nearly every interaction reveals something sordid – child abuse, spousal abuse, corruption – with animal eyes watching nearby. Meanwhile, Holland shows devastating glimpses of how deeply ingrained animal killing is in the town’s culture, such as a bloody children’s play and a priest blessing hunters from the pulpit.
The first act of the film feels very much like a murder mystery, with every new character a possible suspect with something to hide. But then the film opens up and breathes, jumping forward in time season by season (punctuated by title cards informing which animals are in season), becoming more a study of a community. Holland reveals Duszejko’s character slowly, showing the breadth of her daily life and transforming her from a simple victim to a nuanced and fascinating figure. Despite her modest aims, Duszejko is a destabilizing force to the local patriarchy, in ways both obvious (like denouncing the priest mid-sermon) and more subtle. She’s able to take a trait that others would use to trivialize her, like her love of astrology, and weaponize it; giving policemen readings of such fervor that they start to believe. Both Duszejko and the film itself possess a quiet, anarchic energy that simmers to a boil with the final twist. In narration, she complains that the revolutionary spirit of her youth has given way to a sense that things will never change, despite change being an unmovable law. While the beginning of the film makes the whole town look poisonous, the second half sees Duszejko bring together her own more appealing community, based around a young couple and two men she dates, who all have their own reasons to view the town skeptically. By the end, the animal eyes watching the action becomes less a portent of murder than a potent metaphor for viewing human society from a different perspective. Holland uses the tropes of the murder mystery to distract from something much wilder at play. By the time the murders are finally solved, the town is in such upheaval it barely matters.
Though vastly different, “Spoor” is a fascinating counterpoint to Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!,” as both feature a feminine inflected natural sphere attempting to defend itself from the depredations of a boorish patriarchy. But where Aronosky’s allegory flattens its Mother Earth figure into an eternal victim, “Spoor” plays a more subversive game, suggesting that the repressed will rise and that victims will not always remain that way. [A-]
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