I am not sure I really want to know what the animal rights extremists would think of this movie, but I do sometimes feel like telling them about it. I think it is the best case ever put forward for hunting as a natural and good way to live one's life.
This beautiful film always makes feel ashamed that I am a city dweller.
I.S. Oxford
"The books have nothing to say!"
-- Fahrenheit 451
1. I am no expert on PETA, but I believe their main objective is to stop animal cruelty-- the commodification of animals, the inflicting of unnecessary suffering on animals, etc. A hunter who respects the basic sanctity of life and seeks to avoid inflicting unnecessary suffering would not be of interest to be PETA. They are more interested in the veal farmer who force-feeds young animals trapped in small pens.
2. The film is in large part about the wisdom of living in harmony with nature. It is about a lost culture, a culture embodied in one man who deeply respects the life forces he sees all around him in the wild. It is clear enough in the film, but even clearer in the book, that Dersu respects life greatly and he is appalled by rapacious hunting and the indiscriminate taking of life.
I find the conclusion you have drawn from the film a bit baffling. If everyone were to engage in hunting at this point, there would be nothing 'natural' about it; there would be global devastation the likes of which history has never seen. We have to face the fact that nature is not what it was 100, 200 years ago-- it is out of balance and it precariously rests in our hands. We have to recognize our current responsibility of stewardship, not play at pretend pioneer games to please our egos. Perhaps you just want to rationalize, feel good about your own hobby of hunting, so you're trying to read it into this film? That's fine, but to my mind that is a little closer to the Russian soldiers who don't understand that they are part of the forces of desctruction, than it is to Dersu, whose story is told first and foremost to suggest there is something precious disappearing that should be preserved.
Remember that Dersu's destruction comes about only when he has been 'contaminated' by the imperialist mindset long enough to shoot amba, the tiger. He knows that this act of destruction will be his own downfall. The author of the book (Arseniev) and the maker of the film (Kurosawa) clearly dwell on that very point for the reader/viewer to contemplate.