“Unanimal offers invaluable insights into the human condition, as filtered through the lens of other beings that reveal much more about our nature than we would anticipate.”

“Animals – they’re just like us!” – a phrase that commonly accompanies videos and stories showing animals demonstrating behavior similar to our own, mostly trivial (and sometimes borderline exploitative) moments designed to amuse and entertain. Yet, there is something to be said about efforts to draw correlations between our behavior and that of creatures who exist in the natural world. A concept that Tuva Björk and Sally Jacobson explore beautifully in Unanimal, in which they set out to accomplish an ambitious task: highlight and examine the relationship between humans and animals, determining whether there is any common ground between them. Whether for survival, pleasure or merely companionship, we have had a fascinating relationship with animals, and this documentary tries to outline the various ways in which we not only forge these connections, but also create a symbiotic relationship that is far more complex than we would imagine. Through crafting an elegant, intricately woven documentary, the directors make some profoundly bold assertions about human nature and our relationship with other beings, creating a wildly ambitious film that is deeply insightful on both the strange and the familiar.

For about as long as we have been sentient, we have been fascinated by the correlations that exist between species, which includes instances where other creatures demonstrate traits or behaviors that are oddly similar to our own. Whether this spurred research into biology and animal behavior (fields that are continuously becoming more curious about the connections between the natural kingdoms and our own), or was simply a source of entertainment, there is something to be said about these observations. Unanimal has a slightly different approach, albeit one that still feels analogous to the works that have come before, which is to function as an exploration of human nature through observing certain aspects of animal behavior that imply that there are deeper connections than just the quirky, superficial moments usually associated with these ideas. Utilizing a hypnotic and ethereal approach, Björk and Jacobson offer us an intriguing addition to the ‘us and them’ concept, proving that species are not as different as we would expect, and instead have many similarities rooted in a past that theorists are still attempting to understand. The creative visual approach, where the animals are shot in a way that implies they are observing us just as much as we do them, creates a fascinating dynamic that ultimately bolsters the central themes and makes the underlying conversations so much more rigorous and engaging.

To explore the ambitious ideas that inspired them, the directors’ technique is effortlessly simple – they visit establishments that house animals in some way, whether zoos, farms, museums or simply domestic spaces. The story unfolds anywhere in which humans and animals can share the same space, observing one another (even if only in a single direction, such as at museums that house now-extinct species) and where they can interact in some cases. The film is mainly constructed as a series of vignettes, combining material recorded by the directors as well as archival footage, showing our long and storied relationships with the animal kingdom. The connective tissue between these scenes is Isabella Rossellini, whose own history as a lover of the natural world and observer of the animal kingdom made her a terrific candidate to narrate this film, offering us brief but meaningful observations that do not envelop the images we are seeing, but rather provide insights to help the viewer understand the context that guided the filmmakers in creating this film. We’re witness to several very intimate moments in the lives of these animals, the camera being used as a tool for observation more than guiding us to certain points, while choosing a loose, freewheeling structure offers the directors a sense of added flexibility rather than binding them to a particular method that would not have yielded such incredible results.

Towards the end of the film, Rossellini relays a story about philosopher Jacques Derrida, who famously conducted a thought experiment (which he titled The Animal That Therefore I Am) in which he stood sans clothing in front of his cat – two creatures in their barest and most natural state, yet he claimed that only one of them felt any shame in being uncovered, which he found to be one of the defining differences between humans and animals. This is described as his voyage to “the outer contour of humanity”, and is a concept on which much of this fascinating film is constructed. We are invited to accompany the filmmakers as they set out to craft this loose-form, experimental journey into the past, whereby they ask questions that are designed to fundamentally explore our humanity, pondering the divisions between us and animals, in the hopes of understanding the roots of such boundaries and whether they are necessary or even serve any logical purpose other than to perpetuate a false sense of superiority over other species. The film moves at a steady pace and makes the most out of its oddly paltry duration (running just over an hour), becoming a fascinating diversion into the natural world and how our view of it has changed over the years. Consistently compelling and quite insightful, Unanimal offers invaluable insights into the human condition, as filtered through the lens of other beings that reveal much more about our nature than we would anticipate.