"Fauna": Doc Portraits Where the Wild Things Are, but Not for Long

Superhero cinema may be the most influential subgenre in the last decades. Mind you, not for any artistic merit, but merely for driving the box office and keeping studios and theaters afloat. It's not a stretch to say they have overstayed their welcome, as any sense of fun in the proceedings gradually seeped out of the whole endeavor. Even color has gone away. Compare a frame of "Spider-Man" (Sam Raimi, 2002) to one from "Deadpool & Wolverine" (Shawn Levy, 2024), and see everything they have taken from us. There is something to be said for the pleasure they bring millions, even if the industry rigs the market in their favor.

The second force of our times is the much-maligned slow cinema. It may lag at finding massive audiences, but one could build a case that it's similarly influential, if not more, for its sheer geographical reach. Not every country can produce a special effects-laden extravaganza, but they all have indie filmmakers armed with a camera and many ideas. The style favors contemplation over sensational movement. You can apply it to fiction, like in "Memoria" (Apichatpong Weerasetakul, 2021), but its most fertile soil is documentary. 

Most of these movies are so challenging that not even the Art House will dare to program them. You must make the rounds at film festivals or museum theaters to find them. Think of the output of Harvard University's Sensory Ethnography Lab, founded by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Serena Paravel. Their latest, "De Humani Corporis Fabrica" (2022), is a deep dive into the "factory" of the human body, as seen in several hospitals in Paris, or rather, inside their patients. It's not for the squeamish or those who don't think of contemplating their mortality as part of their entertainment.

Philistines make fun of these movies without ever bothering to watch them. They operate under different rules and aesthetic parameters of mass-marketed movies - whether Multiplex or Art House -but they can be highly stimulating if you get into their wavelength. At times, you can find one that is clearer in its intentions and more transparent, making it more welcoming to audiences. Pau Faus' "Fauna" can be a gateway to this intriguing way of registering our world through audiovisual arts.

"Fauna" takes place in the forests of Catalonia, the autonomous community in northeastern Spain. The camera eases us into the forestry as we sit in a clearing where a shepherd takes a break to eat while his herd bleats and has their field with wild plants. You can't tell when and where we are right then and there, although his clothes signal contemporary times. It's a rather direct way of introducing the idea that the themes informing the movie are starting to see are universal. They resonate everywhere.

The sparseness of the visual language lets the images breathe and endows camera movements with significance. When we think we have the concept of fauna clearly defined, a slow zoom-out starts at a green wild field and ends inside a laboratory. We were contemplating the pastoral tableau from behind a glass, surrounded by scientists donning safety clothes that make them look like astronauts. They are epidemiologists and lab technicians working to develop the first Spanish COVID-19 vaccine.

The movie takes place after the pandemic shutdown. The gradual return to normalcy that, in truth, will never be the same is brought home by the incongruent appearance of a group of Japanese tourists. They wear facemasks while discussing the quality of the social media posts they have made in the forest. The hyper-local contemplation is once again turned on its head—first by men and women of science and then by human avatars of globalization.  

That beautiful camera movement opens "Fauna" to its subject: the push and pull between nature and humanity. The laboratory may seem isolated and remote from the wildness surrounding it, but it must rely on lowly animals to push forward the wheels of progress. Or rather, sacrifice them for a higher purpose. Occasionally, the personnel bring wild animals inside the lab to test the vaccines. Goats, pigs, and ducks come incongruently out of an elevator through a sterile aisle. The contrast between the visitors and the environment is slyly funny. Despite modern development, we can't let go of these primordial beings. This irony has a dark edge. The beasts are walking towards their death, after all. Conservationist concerns are addressed in conversations between teachers and students when the instructor confirms that it is impossible to spare the beats when testing the compounds that may save human lives.

In another overheard exchange, Valeriano, our shepherd, tells his wife how his deteriorating health will push him into unwanted retirement. These conversations may lay the preoccupations of the movie way too thick. You can imagine a more cerebral filmmaker editing around them. Alas, precisely this casual clarity makes the movie so inviting. The public does not need a taste for elevated art to understand what's going on and how it speaks to their reality.

For all the formidable aura of power in the scientists' endeavor and the helplessness of the animals in their domain, director Pau Faus finds one of those miracles that documentarists everywhere would kill to see: an unexpected development that pushes his movie in a direction that feeds on his narrative and adds a dash of humor to it. One good day, a tiny insect crawls on the antiseptic floor of the lab. Most probably, it sneaked in on one of the animals, but the slight chance of a filtration in the structure of the building would compromise the safety of the vaccine. And so, a crew of workers begins a picaresque search for any little hole around windows, doors, and every inch of surface in the walls. 

This twist leads to one of the most beautiful moments in the movie. A bluish smoke floats among the trees, setting your imagination to fly. Is it some magical dew? Some trick of light, played by the sun and the foliage? Well, no. A crew performs a structural survey, blasting the colored smoke around the windows to pinpoint any filtration. Faus finds humor and irony everywhere. As Valeriano contemplates the end of his life as a shepherd, his wife obliviously plays a farm simulation game on a tablet computer.   

"Fauna" does not condemn humanity or victimize nature. It contemplates their complex interplay without judgment and with a welcome dash of humor. For all the ingenuity of man, a tiny bug can bring chaos. You might pave over the ground, but grass breaks and grows through it. You can rip it off, but time and time again, it will grow back.

* "Fauna" premiered on August 5 on PBS' "POV." You can stream it on the PBS app until September 4, 2024.