-By Harvey Karten

For movie details, please click here.

In a recent show, Jay Leno talked about how the economy was getting a little better. “Instead of shooting animals for meat,” he stated wryly, “Sarah Palin is back to shooting them for fun.” Where does bullfighting fit into candidate Palin’s lifestyle? Easily, since the 60,000 horned animals killed in Spain’s rings each year are done in for both fun (for the audience) and meat (as the carcasses are given to butchers for sale and for distribution to the poor).

Speaking of the presidential campaign, in a recent radio interview, Senator John McCain reportedly said that he would not meet with the prime minister of Spain, presumably because the man is allegedly a socialist and because he pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq. Some might support the senator for a different reason: No Spaniard eager to be a prime minister will come out for the abolition of bullfighting. Never mind that terrible things are done to the poor animal. The Paso Doble, sometimes called “bullfight music,” may evoke a beautiful dance, but most of the world stops far short of endorsing certain death from swordplay with red capes. Yet the butchery that goes on in the plazas de toros of Spanish villages and large cities is celebrated by millions, sometimes bringing in a stadium audience of 18,000 cheering souls, who love the grossly unfair contest between a stupid animal (the bull) and a stupider one (the matador).

Stephen Higgins and Nina Gilden Seavey’s handsome documentary The Matador takes us inside the bullring while also affording considerable commentary by one matador’s family and others close to the game. The film centers on one of Spain’s pre-eminent matadors, David Fandila—who is just 21 years old and guesses that he might have six or seven more years to hone his craft. Now and then giving us a look at some of Spain’s anti-bullfight activists parading with signs saying “Bullfighting is not an art,” Higgins and Seavey dispense quickly with the moral arguments in opposition to the fight, noting that the bulls—who are given free range to roam and are well-fed—are treated much better than the animals we breed for food in factory farms, which is of course true. Few people would care to spend a few hours watching overworked, poorly paid people in Iowa going through the soul-numbing job of “processing” meat, but huge numbers look forward to seeing bullfights in the stadiums and on TV.

The movie does not get into the long history of the sport—one which may have begun in prehistoric times, if you believe a cave painting that was found of a man confronting the horned animal. Instead, much of the time we’re in the ring, whether in Granada or Lima, though some attention could have been paid to the ceremony opening the corrida as men parade around on horseback amid the sounds of the Paso Doble. Perhaps a full 15 minutes could have been spent affording us a view of one complete fight, an addition which would not have hurt the altogether too brief length of the film. We do get to watch Fandila’s “dance,” the kind of choreography that gets the crowds on their feet shouting “Olé!” In two fights, Fandila is dumped on his butt by bulls each weighing about 1,300 pounds. On one afternoon in which he is given the “honor” of killing all six bulls instead of the usual two, he is gored in the stomach, undergoes surgery in the medical room of the ring where he is stitched up, and returns in 45 minutes to take on the next animal.

In one of the film’s quieter moments, Fandila’s mom is interviewed, a woman who is understandably fearful for the young man’s life, especially when his annual goal is fighting 100 bulls, but who is quite proud of her boy for excelling in the centuries-old Spanish tradition. When Fandila is interviewed by a British journalist in English, he apparently understand the questions, answering in Spanish that he is “awed” by his adversaries—the kind of praise that might make the bulls feel proud if they understood the Iberian language, though they would undoubtedly prefer to be live cowards prancing about the training ranches of Cadiz.