A scene from Marriage Story is reportedly being used to drive away wolves and keep them from killing livestock in the US.
The 2019 film directed by Noah Baumbach follows a married couple, played by Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, going through a divorce and custody battle for their son.
The film, which also stars Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Julie Hagerty, and Merritt Wever, was nominated for multiple awards with Dern winning the Oscar for best supporting actress.
While the film has been hailed by critics as a raw and tender look at the breakdown of a marriage, a scene where Johansson’s and Driver’s characters have a loud, screaming match has found a new use; the US Department of Agriculture is employing it to prevent wolves from attacking cattle.
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, quadcopter drones are playing audio from the scene to scare off wolves in Oregon and California.
“I need the wolves to respond and know that, hey, humans are bad,” USDA district supervisor Paul Wolf told the newspaper about the practice, also known as “wolf hazing”.
The drones appear to be an effective way to prevent livestock from being killed as farmers are unable to harm the wolves due to their endangered status.
The wolf population has risen significantly since their introduction to Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park in 1995, going from 300 to about 6,000.
These drones, which also blast AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”, have reduced the number of wolf attacks, with Southern Oregon seeing the number of cows being killed going down from 11 to two over 85 days.
In a four-star review of the film, The Independent’s Geoffrey Macnab wrote: “Baumbach makes it very obvious that divorce is an expensive and messy business. Truth and respect are soon forgotten as each parent fights for custody of the child and endless new bills need to be paid.
“Baumbach pays explicit homage to Scenes from a Marriage and includes a few moments in which the couples are shown in huge, unflattering close-up, tearing strips off one another with a viciousness which rekindles memories of alienated couples in Ingmar Bergman movies. Generally, though, he treats his main characters with gentleness.”
In an interview with The Independent, Baumbach broke down the argument and the scene that purportedly scares wolves away, saying: “I almost saw it as people trying to find language again, but the emotional context of it is so complex and alive and fractured and they’re trying to put words to it again. In a sense, it’s almost like children learning to speak or something. And of course, then they lose control of it.
“Even though it’s pretend, hearing people say those things to each other repeatedly is hard. Even if you close your eyes, just hearing it…It’s like somebody screaming on the street. You can’t listen to it for too long, even if you’re not implicated.”
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