Gaucho Gaucho

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Ulla T Oct 14 Artifice over authenticity: a beautifully shot but disturbingly glorified glimpse of animal cruelty. Despite its undeniable visual artistry and arthouse sensibilities, Gaucho Gaucho ultimately feels like a hollow, manufactured experience, sacrificing genuine cultural insight for a ruthless glorification of animal abuse under the guise of tradition. Directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw have chosen specific, brutal aspects of gaucho culture and lingered on them throughout the film, resulting in a runtime that feels significantly longer than its 85 minutes. The relentless depiction of animal suffering is hard to stomach: graphic descriptions of condors disemboweling a calf, overt cockfighting references, horses subjected to severe beating and mouth-ripping in rodeo scenes, animals constrained by choke collars, and a cow bound and strained to a pole for milking. The film's attempt to create an immersive soundscape only highlights its inauthenticity. Added animal sound effects, such as horses whinnying in a manner utterly unnatural for discomfort or when a person is simply rotating on their back, feel manipulative and disjointed. Throughout the entire film, there were only two brief moments where a single horse did not visibly display signs of pain or distress. While the gaucho culture undoubtedly has rich, fascinating stories to tell, the filmmakers instead chose to wallow in these particular fragments of brutality, seemingly for shock value or dramatic effect. The aesthetic is stunning, with black-and-white cinematography and painterly compositions, but the technical beauty cannot mask the underlying ethical vacuum. The entire endeavor feels disappointingly calculated, failing to deliver a nuanced portrait and instead prioritizing shallow, stylized violence. See more Read all reviews

Gaucho Gaucho

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