Guess who had a very cool time during the coronavirus lockdown? According to Austrian photographer and documaker Andreas Horvath in his revealing new doc Zoo Lock Down, reports that the captive residents of the world’s bio parks went into shock and depression over the lack of human visitors have been grossly exaggerated. Far from moping despondently at the sudden lack of attention, the wonderful animals in the Salzburg Zoo seem to have had a ball having the place to themselves, with just their feeders and their medics in attendance to serve them. Though the whimsical behavior and photogenic looks of his subjects may have helped Karlovy Vary regular Horvath to a place in the Proxima competition, it is the startling clarity of his closeup photography that offers new perspectives for film audiences and makes this interface between the natural world and man-made manipulation riveting.
Zoo Lock Down is the definition of a one-man-show, with Horvath directing, producing, lensing, editing and composing all by himself; he also recorded the soundtrack of roars, chirping and jaws snapping shut (there is no human dialogue). It is a step outside his usual role as an explorer of people in eye-catching docs like Helmut Berger, Actor or his 2019 fiction film Lillian, based on the true story of a woman who decides to walk from New York back to Russia across the Bering Strait.
Turning his skills as a photographer on the deserted zoo, Horvath (always off-camera) views the world through the animals’ eyes. A silver fox watches the zookeeper who arrives with scoops of dry food; a minute later, two huge bears come out of their cave to sequester the cardboard box that has been left behind. It’s springtime 2020, and signs announce the zoo is in lockdown.
As the camera roams around, it gives a sense that the zoo is enormous and the compounds vast. The music and sound design can be amusing, but at the same time they communicate a vague sense of menace.
The cinematography brings out the camouflage properties of the animals and the intricate visual textures of grass and branches around their faces. Yellow monkeys with black hands go about their activities in families, like the ring-tailed lemurs with funny faces who bounce off the back of a rhino without the larger animal noticing. Pink flamingos wait out a rainstorm inside a hut; a leopard sleeps serenely in a tree. A brave zookeeper descends into a tank of piranhas to clean it as they gather to watch him. The prehistoric muzzle of a crocodile is so immobile it seems made out of papier-mache, until it abruptly shuts its mouth.
Truth to tell, nothing very out of the ordinary occurs, until the rhino scene introduces a touch of the surreal: a team of vets labors over a sedated male and female rhino in a complicated operation of in vitro fertilization, an arduous and amazing thing to watch. This, too, happens in lockdown.
Then one day the sound of squalling babies and shrieking kids rises on the soundtrack, mingled with their mother’s voices, all off-screen. Animal vacation is over; the zoo is open again. Whether the lions and pythons are relieved or dismayed there’s no way of knowing. Staring into the camera lens, their unfathomable expressions can be interpreted any way the viewer wants, like Greta Garbo staring into space at the end of Queen Christina.
A final clue to Horvath’s respectful approach is that the name of each animal appearing in the film appears in the end credits, from the lone crocodile to the bevy of pink flamingos.
Director, screenplay, producer, cinematography, editing, music, sound: Andreas Horvath
Venue: Karlovy Vary Film Festival (Proxima competition)
No dialogue
73 minutes
