Arf Arf

Isle of Dogs a film by Wes Anderson.  With (among many others) Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Edward Norton, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand. *****

My friend Sally (whom I seem to be mentioning all the time here) recently wrote me the following sentence in an e-mail: “I was trying to think of books, current and always current, that blow your socks off–the ones that make you say either I didn’t know you could do that, I didn’t know you could say that, I didn’t know you could think that. In other words, both form & content.”  It’s an interesting topic, and she and I have been compiling a list (I’d love to hear from other readers as well).  But if we were talking about movies, Isle of Dogs would be at the top.

I realize that the movie is the subject of considerable controversy, for its cultural appropriation, its use of Japanese stereotypes, its use in an Asian film of a “white savior” (she happens to be a fifteen year old girl with an Afro, but what the hell).  I’m frankly not interested in any of those subjects.[1]  I’m interested in the experience of sitting on my ass in a theater and watching a screen for a couple of hours (after I just paid at the rate of the senior citizen discount).  And for me in that regard this movie was a marvel, constantly entertaining, funny, and startling.  If I was thinking anything (I assume most critics are sitting there thinking of how culturally inappropriate the movie is, or how many people it offends) it was: Where the hell did he get the idea for this?  Where did this thing come from?

It begins with some little guys playing taiko drums (the last time I saw them was in the movie Rising Sun, which I’m sure is dreadfully inappropriate now).  It moves on to a situation in a Japanese city where an (apparently) cat loving mayor has decided he wants to get rid of all the dogs in town.  His ostensible reason is that they’re sick with various canine ailments, which may eventually spread to humans.  We suspect from the start that the whole thing is fabricated, that he just doesn’t like dogs.  He sends them off to a place called Trash Island, where they will presumably end their days.  It’s a sad lot for them.  It’s a dog’s life.

The Japanese people speak Japanese in this movie.  Sometimes we get a translation; sometimes we don’t.  The dogs speak English.  Yes, the dogs speak, and no, it doesn’t make any sense that Japanese dogs speak English (it does make sense that they look at their Japanese masters with no understanding of what they’re saying.  There are various people/animals in this movie who are standing there listening to a language that they don’t know.  That includes the audience).  There is a wry whimsical sense of humor operating behind this whole enterprise; perhaps the best example I can give is the dialogue of some dogs who find themselves on the island (courtesy of the IMdB website).

“Rex: I used to sleep on a lamb’s wool beanbag next to an electric space heater. That’s my territory, I’m an “indoor” dog.

King: I starred in twenty-two consecutive Doggy Chow commercials. Look at me now, I couldn’t land an audition.

Boss: I was the lead mascot for an undefeated high school baseball team. I lost all my spirit, I’m depressing.

Duke: I only ask for what I’ve always had, a balanced diet, regular grooming, and a general physical once a year.

Chief: You’re talking like a bunch of housebroken… pets.

Rex: You don’t understand. Uh, how could you, I mean you’re a…

Chief: Go ahead say it. I’m a stray, yeah.”

Of course there’s a movement to help the dogs, led primarily by the Mayor’s foster child Atari (Koyu Rankin).  It’s true that the Mayor sometimes shouts fiercely in the way that Japanese did in the old World War II movies, in every movie ever made about Japanese, in fact, and it’s true that the Mayor has a sidekick who looks like every Japanese fascist warrior you’ve ever seen (don’t cartoons often deal in stereotypes?).  It’s true that a white girl protestor is part of the rescue effort, and apparently some people think that, with her curly hair, she resembles Shirley Temple (I thought that, if she looked like anybody, it was Angela Davis.  Basically, she looked like a skinny white girl with an Afro).  And of course—spoiler alert!—they succeed.  What’s a filmmaker going to do, allow a world where there aren’t any dogs?

What’s amazing about the movie to me is what’s happening while all this is going on.  For one thing, it’s stop action animation, which is a marvel in itself.  It’s full of weird gadgets, surprising signs, funny little touches, in almost every scene.  The cast of assembled voices is amazing; they’re just voices, but this is one of the great casts ever assembled for a movie (as you sit there trying to identify everyone).  The 100 minutes of this movie pass by in a flash.

So what’s it actually about?  A fascist type guy who happens not to like some group, so he says they’re dirty, diseased, criminal; he ships them to what amounts to a trash dump with plans eventually to kill them, if they haven’t died already.  It’s not exactly about anybody.  But it resembles a lot of people operating in the world today, almost everywhere you look—in that way it’s like The Death of Stalin, which I just wrote about; it’s ostensibly about one thing, but it’s kind of about something else—and if Wes Anderson wanted to make the bad guy a Japanese mayor, and the hero a skinny white girl, I’m not sure why, but I don’t object to it.  I’m not offended.  I honestly kind of marvel at it.

Wes Anderson is a fascinating artist, and you never know what he’s going to do next.

[1] On the subject of cultural appropriation: isn’t all art cultural appropriation?  As soon as you sit down (or stand up) to perform any art, aren’t you drawing on everything you’ve ever seen, heard, or read about?  Isn’t that what’s wonderful about the whole artistic enterprise, and what’s interesting about being alive right now?  As Thornton Wilder once said, art is not a competition, it’s a relay.