DEATH OF ANIMALS IN FILM

Because in my film I will be looking at the death of a beloved pet, I will neeed to look at how the film industry handles the death of animals.

One film that comes to mind when I think about it, is 'Four Lions', Chris Morris' debut film about a bunch of terrorists. During one scene in the film, they are running around with some bombs (sounds terribly grown up, I know), when there is an accident and both a sheep and their friend dies. Although it sounds quite heavy in writing, in the film it is treated as a comic moment - and often death of animals are used for comic effect. Another example of this is the 2003 film ''Just Married' - in one scene, Brittany Murphy's character's boyfriend, played by Ashton Kutcher accidentally kills her dog. I remember watching this film and everyone I was with laughing at this moment, but I personally never found it funny.

However, we are all familiar with the film Bambi - when his mother is killed by the hunters, I don't think that there is a dry eye in the house. In the film Bambi, Disney are not as explicit as the two previous films I have mentioned - although Bambi was made in 1942. A more recent film by Disney dealing with animals is 'Homeward Bound', the tale of 2 dogs and a cat that go cross country in the aim of finding their family. Among the gang is an old dog, named Shadow, who towards the end of the film, injures himself, and is, at the time, presumed dead by his owners. The other animals encourage him to get up to go and greet his owner, yet he insists they go on without him because he is too old. However, eventually he gets up and goes and greets his owners. I think that in was this is very similar to my own ideas for my short film - another aspect that interested me was the fact that the younger puppy in the film voices his desire not to have a permanent home; which relates to unloyalty in puppies, another aspect in my film I'm going to highlight.