The Imagery of Apuleius’ Donkey (The Golden Ass) and the Culture of the Anthropocene: Animal Poetics in Cinematography of the 20th and 21st Centuries
The article reviews two films about animals — Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) and Eo (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2022) — which both adopt motives that appeared in Apuleius’ novel Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass (2nd century AD). Special attention in the article is given to the methods of the ani...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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State Institute for Art Studies
2025-06-01
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| Series: | Художественная культура |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://artculturestudies.sias.ru/upload/iblock/95a/g2squp6pmevn26kdsq5rrd17a6twv91p/hk_2025_2_482.pdf |
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| Summary: | The article reviews two films about animals — Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) and Eo (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2022) — which both adopt motives that appeared in Apuleius’ novel Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass (2nd century AD). Special attention in the article is given to the methods of the animal cinematographic representation, which despite the resemblance of Bresson’s and Skolimowski’s premises differ drastically in the two films.
Over the last decades, filmmakers have shifted away from the anthropocentric approach to animals. The concept of sustainable film production with particular concern for environmental and biodiversity issues has been formed and improved. The article claims two ways of representing the same character (in the case of the two analysed films — a donkey). The first method is based on the assumption that animals could have the same mindset as humans, and the second one — on fantasy and creative latitude in using non-verbal agents to spell out and convey animals’ feelings. In the first case, the director gets an opportunity to show human relationships from an unusual angle, whereas in the second one, he has a chance to develop new techniques enriching his artistic style and to draw attention to animal rights issues by acting upon the viewer’s perception via non-verbal communication. Both films inherit from the ancient novel and bring it to the present: the first one takes over the participation effect, whereas the second one adopts an affective tone and ludic element. |
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| ISSN: | 2226-0072 |