Predators at War

The drama of survival is unparalleled. Staving off death presents the greatest conflict in any organic creation’s life. The struggle to maintain life is as routine as eating, drinking, and sleeping. The National Geographic Channel’s Predators At War takes this commonality and places it in a different context; during a great drought, 5 large African predators (Lions, Hyenas, Wild Dogs, Leopards, and Cheetahs) must all compete, in close quarters, for a limited amount of resources. As the disparity of the drought deepens, the inevitable arises and the animals, all of a certain distinctive lore, must re-arrange their natural hierarchy to determine who are the hunters and who are the hunted.

The film is shot mostly in an observational mode, but some elements of the expository style are present. The narrator goes to great lengths to discuss and describe the scenes depicted, but since the point of the film is to document nature gone haywire, he is forced to factually discuss how this situation, excruciating thirst and lack of prey, has caused the animals to deviate from the norm. Ellis and McClane, in “A New History of Documentary Film,” write that “If Flaherty was a storyteller, he was also a teacher. His pedagogy employed mystery and suspense to arouse our curiosity.” (Ellis & McLane, 2005 p.17) Similarly, Predators At War uses drama, mystique, and suspense – in this case, factual – to advance the story and gain viewer interest. Outside, however, of the narrator’s factual intrusion, the film is shot with an unobtrusive camera that eloquently and seamlessly (there are no “doctored” film sequences in this documentary as kill scenes, often very bloody and realistic, are captured in full without any manipulation of camera angles or shots) captures once proud predators in various states of despair.

The conceptual idea behind this film is the idea of placing animals into the context of human warfare. The narrator uses phrases like “a panzer division of Lions” or “a cavalry of wild dogs” in order to both mimic the distinct survival/defense mechanisms of each animal and draw certain parallels to human warfare. Through this primitive yet fiercely stirring supposition, we see this as a noble war, fought not over the triviality of money or the senselessness of religion, but for survival. This idea of survival was what Robert Flaherty tried to capture in his films Nanook of the North and Man of Aran. The subjects in each picture lived a life outside of the ordinary, outside the norm, and ultimately, outside of sort of cultivated comfort. Mother Nature was both their provider and their adversary. In this way, it seems to me that Predators At War shares an uncanny similarity (outside of the species of the subject, obviously) with Flaherty’s work. The pride of lions or pack of wild dogs depicted in Predators At War rely on nature to provide for them, but during the time of great drought, the relationship between physical nature and animal life is an antagonistic one. Obviously, the idea of absolute truth rings clearer (although not infallibly so) in Predators at War simply because wild animals are much harder to manipulate (in terms of dramatic exposition) than human beings.

The story in Predators at War is a simple one. The taught depiction of living (and ultimately, survival for the “lucky” ones) in nearly inhospitable conditions is never deviated from or delegated to any sort of secondary role. As the film progresses, the days without rain drag on and on, during which the animals become more desperate in their battle against nature. At one point, a scene rigidly and shockingly depicts several female lions, consumed with hunger, cannibalizing the rotting corpse of one of their compatriots who had succumbed to malnourishment and disease. It is also pertinent to note that although Bunuel’s Land Without Bread is a mocking, almost satirical look at humanity within nature, similar scenes, depicting the taboo, are present. As I watched the image of the girl, sick and abandoned, I thought of the parallels between the two films (Land Without Bread and Predators At War); in each, normal familial relationships were being broken due to the inability to cull any sort sustainability from other nature.

It is difficult to determine conclusively whether objectivity and truth are being deviated from in “Predators At War” because, like any film with a large budget and high production value, truth can bent. My guess, however, is that the realism depicted in the film corresponds to actual occurrences. I say this because certain scenes, undoubtedly some of the most powerful scenes in Predators At War, simply cannot have been tampered with. Consider the leopard that while, hunting alone, manages to do what the lions, hyenas, wild dogs, and cheetahs could not do by catching a gazelle. The sounds of death and fresh kill bring an entire pack of both lions and hyenas. To escape, the leopard climbs up the tree with the kill in its mouth (a miracle in itself – a leopard carrying more than its own body weight vertically up a tree) while the rest of the animals pace nervously below, their lustfully desperate eyes transfixed on the kill above.

While John Else criticizes the obvert use of drama to drive current documentary films, Predators At War does not appear overly dramatic. The drama depicted in the film is neither manufactured nor gluttonous. Surely, the suspense in the film permeates its entirety but the pace of the drama is dictated by the actual occurrence of events. The animals desperately need the water – their prey has left to search for greener pastures and the rivers which provide drinking water have dried to mud - and the situation grows increasingly dire each day. Unlike films which use human subjects, the animals cannot complain or whine. Instead, they simply try to adapt and develop mechanisms in order to survive. In the end, the conflict in Predators At War is solved by the onset of the rainy season. The resolution in the film is a simple one, a methodical and annual process that rejuvenates the savannah from near-death each year (although not a drought of this proportion). The lack of water has killed some of the once majestic animals, but the sense of better days ahead left me grappling with the same issues present in Flaherty’s films depicting the Eskimo’s or Aranian’s precarious relationship with nature. In many ways, it is difficult to understand a nearly full dependency on nature and in situations when the earth does not provide, as depicted in Land Without Bread, the results can be disastrous. In all the aforementioned films, however, nature methodically marches on with little concern for the happiness of its inhabitants. I believe that it is this conflict, the idea of sustainability in regards the natural earth, that creates the drama that propels the stories depicted in Predators At War, Land Without Bread, Nanook of the North, and Man of Aran.