Those touched by the friendship between Emma the pig and Mr Greasy the rooster in John Chester's The Biggest Little Farm can embark upon a new porcine romance with Viktor Kossakovsky's remarkable documentary. Focusing primarily on a Norwegian sow named Gunda and her litter of a dozen piglets, the monochrome action scrupulously avoids anthropomorphism, although that doesn't mean there's any stinting on those ‘aww, cute” moments of barnyard shtick.
Eschewing voiceover, Kossakovsky lets nature take its course, as Gunda gives birth in the first of a series of leisurely long takes that are shot with ingenuity and discretion by the director and co-cameraman Egil Håskjold Larsen, whose sublime visuals are complemented by Alexander Dudarev's equally extraordinary sound design. Gunda resides on a Norwegian farm, where the growing piglets have plenty of space to explore and indulge in quarrelsome play before romping back to mum at mealtimes.
Kossakovsky spares us the grim details.
In order to convey the passage of time, however, Kossakovsky cuts away to a British poultry reserve and a Spanish cattle sanctuary, where the emphasis remains on unhurried close-ups of characterful creatures engaging with each other and their surroundings. Even as they get older and more curious, however, the piggies don't like to stray too far from their mother, who seizes every chance she can get to bury her snout in some dry straw or wallow in a soothing mudbath.
For all the rustic charm of the footage, anyone who has ever scarfed a sausage roll or a bacon butty should know where this is going to end. Yet, while the attachment of lifelong vegan Joaquin Phoenix as executive producer provides a clue to the picture's understated advocatorial element, Kossakovsky spares us the grim details in confronting us with something much more harrowing — the agony of a mother being separated from her young.