The zoo is a protective enclosure, and the zoo is a prison. Rinland holds both in hand, retreating from polemic. Her images stand alone, untamed by voiceover commentary or text on-screen, reveling in the ambiguity captured by the non-human eye of the lens. She modestly articulates her perspective through the gaze of her 16mm camera rather than through the addition of narration, with a special attention to tactility and gesture familiar from her previous feature, Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another (2019). Every so often, Rinland’s cinematography is interrupted by surveillance footage, reminding us that as much as the look of the camera can be a caress, it can also be a policing force. Crucial information regarding the history of the Ecoparque is gleaned in sequences set in the institution’s archives and during a guided tour of its grounds, but the bulk of Collective Monologue stays close to the drama of difference and similarity that plays out in our encounter with nonhuman animals—a drama of empathy, alterity, and fascination. Rinland does not attempt to simulate how turtles or elephants or flamingoes experience the world, but she does seek to dislodge a dominant mode of thought and representation accords the human the privilege of being a subject while relegating the animal to the status of mere object. Something more horizontal emerges, without ever losing sight of profoundly unequal conditions of existence that prevail.

The film concludes with a quotation from developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, shedding light on what might have seemed a cryptic title: “Collective monologue is a period of egocentrism in a young child’s life where they see the point of view of the listener as irrelevant. They believe that nature is created for them, and that they can control it.” What does this have to do with the zoo? In the final sequence, a female carer cradles the howler monkey Juanita like a baby, in what one might call an interspecies pietà. She weeps for the infirm primate. Here, as throughout Collective Monologue, Rinland pays tribute to the devotion of the workers, to their sincere commitment to their wards. And yet, in the citation of Piaget that follows, the specter of a different relationship to animal life emerges, one that has been equally present throughout the preceding one hundred minutes. Although animals are so often infantilized, perhaps the period of egocentrism never ends and it is we who are a species of tyrannical children, babbling on to ourselves, understanding the myriad forms of non-human life around us only on our terms. The workers speak incessantly to the animals, voicing words of praise, affection, encouragement and frustration. They seek an intersubjective connection. Sounds might be emitted in response, but a dialogue will always elude them. – Erika Balsom

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