(twist morality until it is unrecognizable and broken, not have sex with horses)
Bestiality flick shocks Cannes
But while Zoo has drawn big, curious crowds at its screenings, the real unsettling quality about the movie is its approach: it depicts the men in a sympathetic light, one that tries to push the viewers to understanding their sexual perversion.
...Independent filmmaker Robinson Devor shies away from prurient imagery, instead enveloping the story in rich photography that gives it a dreamlike beauty overwhelming the sordidness of the subject matter.
...He said the absence of judgement was a deliberate choice, one reinforced after he watched some of the actual videos the men had taken of their horse sessions - footage that doesn't make it into the film, apart from the barest of glimpses at one point.
"They showed us the videos not to show us pornography, but to show an animal that wanted to be with them," Devor said, though he added that he kept some scepticism about the taped acts.
"We don't know what the conditioning was (for the horses)."
..."They've crafted a subdued, mysterious and intensely beautiful film that presents bestiality not for the purpose of titillation but as a way of investigating the subjective nature of morality," the movie trade magazine Variety wrote.
...The men heard in the film are remarkably honest about their motivations. One of them argues "mammal to mammal" love should not be seen as wrong.
Another firmly rejects the tag "bad person" rhis employer lays upon him before he is sacked. They all say the horses were willing participants.
Indeed, the only judgement seemingly expressed in the documentary is not on the matter in the stable at all. It is in fleeting radio references to US President George W Bush's "war on terror" and the presumed complicity-for-profit of big companies such as Boeing.
Even the cast ended up feeling compassion for the men depicted in Zoo.
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