Gutting of Pope?
Maybe I missed something, but why did he do it?
shareMaybe he was gonna try hiding in popes body, but couldnt fit?
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MovieChat Forums > Seraphim Falls (2007) Discussion > Gutting of Pope?
It's not actually shown, but he probably went for Pope's liver. It's a good source of protein and 'good' iron. It's a standard survival practice for quite a few Military Services (armies) around the world.
sharestefano..did you not watch the movie? 2 minutes after he does it.
"what kinda man would eat another man like this?"
"he DIDN"T eat him"
I didn't say he actually ate the liver or any other part of Pope for that matter. I believe he thought about it, though...
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I heard that line spoken with fear, as if the speaker was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince the kid. It's not like they looked inside to see if anything was missing.
sharestefanosfarmakas: "It's not actually shown, but he probably went for Pope's liver. It's a good source of protein and 'good' iron. It's a standard survival practice for quite a few Military Services (armies) around the world."
And apparently the Union Army? Human livers? I think not!
Do you have a URL or any real world reference that any legitimate armed force, outside of Uganda under Idi Amin, that would violate the Geneva Convention by training their soldiers to eat the liver of their freshly killed enemy?
Based on the people I know, what I do to my own liver, and the fact that the liver is a major filter for the body, I wouldn't be eating anyone's liver soon, super iron or not.
I also know of another part of a man's body that is a huge source of protein that I would not be indulging in either, no mater what state of starvation I reach.
Stefanosfarmakas, I am fining you for silliness: 2 days, no internet.
I'm pretty sure the guys, who crashed with their plane in the mountains, many years ago, thought of themselves as high and mighty as you.
Then they were forced to eat parts of the bodies of those who died in the crash, because otherwise they had died.
Similar is reported from Stalingrad, too. Germans soldiers may have engaged in cannibalism. Bottom line is, if you really don't want to die, you will do it as well and no convention will stop you.
To warm his hands. But it also foreshadows the scene with the dead horse.
shareI thought he was warming his hands too, but couldn't be sure. I just didn't understand why he couldn't put his hand into the jacket under his armpit or something. Would the inside of a human body be extra warm? I remember when they find dead people in police forensics shows the coroner always have the dead body's temperature at 80 - 90s, and a fresh body's temperature (hence live human body) is supposed to be around mid-90s or something like that.
shareWhen you're in cold place the capillaries shrink (the smallest blood vessels) which get blood to your skin and muscles. This happens so that most of the blood goes to your organs to keep them warm so they dont fail. So the inside of his guts would have been much warmer than his skin, because he wanted to warm his hands aswell.
Bowl a strike so we can have fun at the strip club, I wana see a real 7 - 10 split!
How long would he get to warm his hands? Is it really going to benefit him much?
shareI probably would have gone for the jacket for a long term solution. But Pope's skin looked pretty toasty. And skinning Pope and wearing it may have shown Carver's men it could get ugly.
sharePeople should be banned from the internet for publicly comparing what happens in "police forensics shows" to real life, as though they have anything at all in common.
shareplain and simple it was to warm his hands.
shareIt's an old mountain man trick to keep warm. Many times, to keep from freezing, they would gut a buffalo or their horse, if necessary, and thrust their arms, feet & as much of their body as they could fit inside the steaming carcass of the animal.
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I shutter to think of the methods they used and if the animals were really dead or alive. There is a reason they live on those mountains alone.
shareFrom wikipedia:
Cannibalism was reported by the journalist Neil Davis during the South East Asian wars of the 1960s and 1970s. Davis reported that Cambodian troops ritually ate portions of the slain enemy, typically the liver. However he, and many refugees, also report that cannibalism was practiced non-ritually when there was no food to be found. This usually occurred when towns and villages were under Khmer Rouge control, and food was strictly rationed, leading to widespread starvation. Any civilian caught participating in cannibalism would have been immediately executed. It has been reported by defectors and refugees that, at the height of the North Korean famine in 1996, cannibalism was sometimes practiced in North Korea.[119]
While I wouldn't call eating parts of other humans 'standard' survival practice. If you are starved and all you have access to is human flesh, then the liver is probably the most nutritious part of the human body you can eat. In a life or death situation, just how dirty you are willing to play could make the difference between who dies and who lives.
Regardless of what 'really happened', I don't think cannibalism is something they wanted to portray in this film. The gutting could also had the effect to psyche out his followers. So there are at least three good reasons for gutting Pope, two of which they showed in the film. Whether or not the third happened is anyone's guess and it really is up to the viewers to decide. I don't think he ate any part of Pope because there were no gutting when he didn't need to warm his hands.
However I'm sure it has happened somewhere and I'm sure it could be a survival tactic if you could stomach it. But most people wouldn't.
Warming his hands, pure and simple. It can mean the difference between life and death because if your hands fail completely, nothing works. I've known of good sailors who lost their lives around Memorial Day because they went overboard in that cold water - and by the time the vessel turned and came back, etc., the one who fell over could no longer even make a fist and so could not tie a line to himself. It's an unbelievable sensation.
No idea why this guy is fixated on cannibalism? While surprised that it occurred with any regularity at all that recently in Cambodia, there were still no actual numbers or statistics given and his fixation has him talking garbage as if it's a viable 'survival option' - no one talks like that and the issue is far from a survival matter. If that's the way you think about it, you should have that looked at...
Warming his hands. The guy in the short story by Jack London "To Build a Fire" was wanting to do that too but could never catch the dog.
shareExactly. That's what I first remembered as well. At such a freezing weather, after he just got out of the water, it meant survival for him.
sharePlus, he knew that he may have to use the gun he just took off of Pope. Can't use a gun very well with frostbitten fingers.
~~Bayowolf
There's a difference between being frank... and being dick.
imagine your hands are colder than they've ever been. Then sliding them into warm bath water.
98.6 degrees warm. Staving off frost bite. If he could have climbed inside, he would have.