I liked that film, and it makes me sad to imagine that any claims about animal cruelty on this movie were true. Was I duped by my pal?
I think you need to be more specific and ler us know specifically what kinds of claims your friend is making.
What claims?
From what I remember of the movie, there were two scenes that made me think, “Man those animal rights activists are gonna be pissed!” The first was when the cat was fighting with the crab. And losing. The second was when the cat “jumped” off the cliff. From the looks of it, they had to throw that cat from a pretty good height into the water. Are you referring to those scenes?
I was told that there were several deaths of animals during the filming, such as during the waterfall scene, and that a puppy was accidentally killed in the snow, in that they just used a group of kittens and puppies till they got the right “take.” Also, allegedly, there’s no guarantee at the end of the film that “no animals were harmed in the making of this film.” Mind you, I’m not saying that I believe any of this, but I just wanted to be sure…it’s too unlikely not to be true.
I can’t be sure, of course, but I can say that a quick googlesearch reveals no substantial reports. What it reveals is a few FOAF (“A friend of a friend told me blah blah blah”) stories, but nothing from anything like a reliable knowledgeable source.
One very frequent IMDB poster, Fastfwrd, claims to have emailed with the director, and says: “Let me put your minds at ease, the director indeed filmed this movie on his own island, there were many animal extras used and none were severely hurt (short of crabs and lobsters pinching). The director actually had a degree in animal sciences and liked them so much he decided to make this 5 year span docu-film. The cat thrown off the cliff was only ONE cat, yes he was thrown but he survived, all the animals came from farms. Yes the dog actually got on the turtles back on it’s own, I understand why now since I’ve aquired a pug, very curious climbers. The bear also came from a farm, obviously not your run of the mill farm, but he was trained to have a calm demeanor. If you want to know how I’ve aquired all this information, well I was just as concerned as you guys, so I did a crap load of research and e-mailing. Don’t believe me? Try it yourself.” (You can find it in the discussion of the movie at IMDB, but you’ll need to sign up to read it there.)
Frankly, I’m guessing that anyone who spends 5 YEARS filming animals for a 90 minute movie is probably being very gentle with them. He could have saved a lot of time and money by not giving a shit and just getting the shots without concern for the animals. I’m not sure, but the movie always feels to me like he spent a lot of time filming puppies and kittens playing, and wrote a story around the footage he got mostly spontaneously. So any damage done to the kitten whilst playing with a crab (“I peench.”) was the kitten’s own darn fault!
Sorry, it’s not as solid of a GQ answer as I’d like, but I guess the point is that if people seriously make such accusations, they need to be the ones to present some evidence in their favor. We can’t prove a negative, since there’s no Japanese analog to the American Humane’s Film & Television Unit to assure us they were watching.
Interesting, I wasn’t aware that the animal-watchers weren’t an international organization. Thanks for your answer, it’s solid enough for me. Especially since if this movie was the way my friend described, there would have been a huge scandal, which should have been my first clue that something was rotten. Since this is the same friend who claimed that the Patriot Act could have drafted all computer people at will for use in the TWAT.