The Elephant in the Living Room (Michael Webber, 2009): USA

Reviewed by Charlotte Brange. Viewed at Victoria Hall, at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

The elephant is the living room refers to an old English idiom for missing something truly obvious standing in front of our eyes. It is also an expression used when something big is happening, but we choose to ignore it.

But we should not choose to ignore The Elephant in the Living Room. In this important documentary we follow the police/fire/paramedic Tim Harrison from Ohio, who also has the extra job of picking up unwanted animals from citizens. People from every state call him, he captures the animal, and then it varies where the animals end up. But it’s not cats, dogs or guinea pigs. This could be cougars, snakes, hyenas, lions and many more exotic animals.

We are tracing Harrison through cities all over the country where he faces all kinds of animals. One story is especially close to his heart. A lion couple, complete with three cubs lives in Terry Brumfield’s backyard and Harrison does everything in his power so they’ll have a good life even though they’re not free.

The interesting part of this movie is how wild animals from exotic countries could end up in a totally normal home in the United. Webber attends a trade market for exotic animals where you can buy all sorts of animals that you can even imagine. A hyena to guard your house? A toxic pet snake for you 6-year-old? Why not a little cougar kitten who will eventually grow big as yourself?

We get to see beautiful lions run around in the free, in contrast to the miserable caged up lions. This lions are often filmed really zoomed in, which makes their ‘world’ seem even smaller. It will make you wonder what right we have as humans to lock up these animals that should be running all over the savanna.

This is mixed up with short news about what have happened to other animals that have escaped from their captivity and it’s heartbreaking. We see a chimpanzee that has lived his whole life in a family, which has now hurt his owner critical and is barely recognizable. The animal’s instincts are shown eventually, even how much we’ll try to keep them as pets.

I saw the Cove (Louie Psihoyos, 2009) the night before and I couldn’t help but compare this two animal-saving documentaries. But what the Cove does (with all right) is to ONLY show the “good part”, those who want to save the whales. In The Elephant in the Living Room, we are torn between right or wrong. It’s wrong to have wild animals locked up, but what are we going to do about it? It’s a complicated issue and there’s no actual solution to the problem. Harrison knows that when he captures an animal, sometimes this animal will directly be put down and it breaks his heart. He explained after the movie ended at the US premiere that he there are no good versus bad in the movie; they are really trying to send a message that this is a serious and problem.

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Published:
02.17.10 / 4pm
Category:
Documentary, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2010