Culture
Now Playing: ‘Python Hunt’ shows us man is the wildest animal
By: Gordon Briggs
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It’s called the Florida Python Challenge. Every year, the competition invites amateur and professional hunters into the Everglades for 10 grueling days and nights to remove invasive, ecosystem-destroying Burmese pythons.
Rather than making another simple nature documentary, The Python Hunt focuses on the odd personalities of the hunters.
So many traditional nature documentaries focus on wild animals, but Python Hunt knows people can be more interesting than Pythons. This is a nature documentary that focuses on the hunters and not the hunted. Unlike traditional documentaries that observe wildlife undisturbed, the film plays out more like an offbeat human comedy populated by everyone from eccentric local oddballs to novices and veteran hunters—each of whom seeks fame, fortune, or personal validation in the Hunt.
For instance, we meet Anne Stratton Hilt: an eccentric 82-year-old widow taking on the Everglades as part of a unique late-in-life adventure, and is eager to stab a python in the brain.
There’s “Jimbo”, a brash local Florida native and flamboyant hunter whose enthusiasm for the sport has gotten him banned from the official challenge. Each of these characters makes for an interesting subject, and adds an extra layer of personality to the film.
Watching Python Hunt, you get the sense that it’s not the Hunt itself that matters, but the oddball hunter’s culture that has popped up around it. The number of snakes you kill isn’t as important as traveling to Florida, showing off your various weapons, and demonstrating your willingness to kill pythons.
Furthermore, I appreciate the way the movie complicates the whole idea of the competition. Standard nature docs present a clear predator-prey dynamic. Still, this film complicates the narrative by asking if the pythons are merely scapegoats for a wider ecosystem already ruined by human actions like urban expansion.
I wouldn’t call this film any kind of masterpiece; for those interested in a different kind of nature documentary, I recommend seeking out Python Hunt on your streaming platforms.
★★★