In its mix of essentialist storytelling and blatant artifice, Jungle sometimes recalls the 1940s work of low-budget director Edgar G. Ulmer (Bluebeard, Strange Illusion, Ruthless). Ulmer was shrewd in his use of lighting and offscreen space to cover up his lack of resources—he called on viewers to imagine the world outside the frames, thus making the world of the film as big as anything the viewer can imagine. Ulmer’s minimalist aesthetic also encouraged viewers to focus on more cerebral themes. Jungle achieves an abstraction that resembles Ulmer in its expressionistic dream sequences, which consider Yossi’s deep-seated motives for risking his life, and in conversations, filmed in close-up, that find the characters bearing their true feelings about each other. The movie is as much about inner space as it is about the natural world.
