Though its title may suggest a more traditional wildlife sanctuary narrative, Wildcat charts the visceral and literal intensities of survival in both man and animalkind. This documentary does deal with surface-level issues of animal rescue and rehabilitation, but it equally focuses on the severe post-traumatic stress felt by British military veteran Harry Turner. While volunteering for the nonprofit conservation organization Hoja Nueva, Harry strives to find his own sense of being and redemption through his contributions to two specific ocelot rescues, with felines Khan and Keanu.
While dealing with the hardships of jungle life, emotional traumas endured from the War in Afghanistan, internal turmoil, and impulses to self-harm, Harry finds catharsis and mental welfare through his searing devotion to ocelot rehabilitation. Through his experiences in the Peruvian Amazon, his paternal love for the young ocelots, his companionship with ecologist Samantha Zwicker (who founded Hoja Nueva), and in his affirmed love for his own flesh and blood, Harry’s mental health ebbs and flows towards a state of peace, as he is able to ameliorate his own personal pains through service and devotion to these rehabilitation projects.
Nestled in the Las Piedras region of Madre de Dios, Peru, Wildcat begins with montage footage of Harry, who has spent an indeterminate, but lengthy period of time at Hoja Nueva. At the start of this story, he has already become a crucial member of Samantha’s team and has begun a partnership with her. Interestingly, the romance between these two is downplayed throughout most of the film. The intimacy between Harry and Samantha is certainly apparent, but filmmakers Melissa Lesh and Trevor Beck Frost focus more on the platonic quality of their relationship than their passion as a point of narrative attention. The opening sequences of the documentary cover a lot of information, and it isn’t long before Harry and the team stumble upon an injured baby ocelot. Harry becomes quickly and deeply attached to the carnivorous kitten whom they name Khan. Their mission to care for Khan is a vanguard effort, in that Hoja Nueva becomes the first wildlife rescue center in Peru to specialize in carnivore rewilding.
Sadly, however, midway through his eighteen-month rehabilitation, Khan falls victim to a shotgun trap lain hidden in the jungle and dies from his injuries. Harry is in an incensed state of anguish over this, as his attachment to Khan was a means of ameliorating the sorrow and guilt from his experiences in war. Although Harry’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and chronic depression worsen following Khan’s passing, he remains living and working at Hoja Nueva. In memoriam, he fixes a grave marker for Khan and inks a large memorial tattoo of the ocelot above his sternum. These dramatic events occur rather soon in the documentary and set the story for Harry’s eventual encounter with another displaced baby ocelot, Keanu, who becomes their second major rehabilitation project and a chance at redemption for the intense loss of Khan.
The majority of Wildcat details Harry’s emotional peaks and valleys during the year-and-a-half rehabilitation period with Keanu. As in his relationship with Khan, Harry becomes fixated and attached to caring for Keanu. At first, this experience is to his benefit and helps rehabilitate Harry himself and his own traumas, but the emotional intensity and physical stress of the long-term project provoke certain reoccurring mental health issues, including frequent acts of self-harm, bouts of concerning melancholy, and suicidal urges. Lesh and Frost keep their attention close to Harry, and despite his mercurial and, at times, threatening behavior, the audience shares in his emotional triumphs and collapses.
Wildcat’s story features episodes throughout Keanu and Harry’s rehabilitation that include a visit from Harry’s younger brother and parents, who travel from the U.K., and Samantha’s commutes back and forth from Madre de Dios to Seattle, which she must frequent to present her doctoral research on their conservation and ecological efforts. Samantha’s field research and ongoing education in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington take her away from her Peruvian conversation work, but this also helps to reorient our attention to her story alongside Harry’s. During her childhood, her father’s alcoholism and conflicting personality (violent intoxicated behaviors counterpoised by loving fatherhood) appear to mirror her complicated relationship with Harry, whose own distressing moments of rage and self-harm are emotionally taxing for her. As the stress of Keanu’s rehabilitation weighs on Harry and Samantha’s relationship, ultimatums and boundaries are set that will come to affect their personal connections and ecological partnership together in the Amazonian rainforest.
As the film weaves through domestic traumas, issues of mental health, and the overwhelming pressure of rehabilitation, Wildcat generates a deep sense of sympathy for its subjects. Samantha is courageous, patient, and admirable in her leadership conservation and in her emotional support for Harry. And Harry’s acute sensitivity in caring for Khan, Keanu, and his family gives rise to a strong, sympathetic understanding of his story. When he weeps and breathes sighs of relief, it’s difficult not to affectively share in these emotions. Despite the film’s strong sense of pathos and catharsis, Wildcat does have its shortcomings.
Samantha’s troubled relationship with her father feels, in some ways, like a foil for Harry’s story, as their relationship proves challenging in similar scopes. The documentary doesn’t quite seem to allot Samantha the time to resolve her own issues on her own terms, but this narrative misstep could have been amended with a little more attention toward Sam’s childhood story and how this turmoil informed her relationship with Harry. Aside from this matter, Wildcat really does excel in detailing the emotional journeys of Samantha, Harry, Keanu, and Khan (to whom the film is dedicated) and the ecological efforts of Hoja Nueva. Lesh and Frost survey the wildlife (both feline and human) deep in the Amazon and grant credence to Harry’s delicate story as one that is challenging, dense, and emotionally affective. Even the commissioned song for the film, “A Sky Like I’ve Never Seen,” co-written by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and musicians Tim Bernardes and Marta Sofia Honer, indicates in its lyrics a message of healing after hardship.
As someone who first viewed this documentary with little presumption, I am grateful for how much the film moved me. I wept alongside Harry while only feeling a mere iota of his elations, relapses, reliefs, and pains. As a moving story of rehabilitation, Wildcat brought me to the fore of human emotion and left me floored under the canopy of the stirring challenges and transformations of its humans and felids.
While Wildcat is a painful journey, in the end, we find more than one creature is rescued, and its ethos of rehabilitation and rewilding finds value in both people and animals. Its primary theme of human action toward animal welfare as a mode of personal self-care will undoubtedly strike a resonance with most viewers. Most of us struggle with negative emotions and different measures of personal afflictions, issues, and traumas. In spite of this, Wildcat shows a method of consolation through human and nonhuman welfare that is both ecological and internal. As Hoja Nueva keenly intimates in its namesake, it’s never too late to turn a new leaf.
