Isle of the Dogs

Isle of the Dogs (2018) is a stop-action animated feature by Wes Anderson.  The auteur's peculiarly "precious" style, a mixture of laconic whimsy and Gothic melodrama, staged in symmetrically designed tableaux, is emphatically evident in this production.  Critics have noted that Wes Anderson's style and odd thematic concerns are most purely expressed in his animated features -- The Fabulous Mr. Fox had the same quality.  Using actual live-action actors tends to slightly dilute Anderson's fantastically controlled décor and mise-en-scene:  after all a real person might stutter or burp or be very slightly asymmetrical -- elements of accidental reality (or "chaos" as Anderson probably would imagine) have a habit of intruding when you are working with flesh and blood people.  No such threat exists in the densely designed, artificial world of Isle of Dogs with its weirdly stoic animatronic puppets   Anderson uses his standard repertoire of actors (Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, etc.) augmented with Francis McDormand and a cadre of Japanese stars to provide the voices of his characters -- the dogs speak in English (their barks have been translated a title advises) and the Japanese characters speak Japanese that is, often, left untranslated.  Although the film has a strong Japanese element, and seems redolent of Japanese anime, the movie was made in the United States and at the Berlin Babelsberg studios.  The picture contains parodies of Japanese films, a Kabuki play, Sumo wrestling, and, in several themes, we are treated to the foreboding Seven Samurai theme played as a mambo -- Prokofiev's Lt. Kije Suite is also featured on the soundtrack.

The film's plot is ridiculous:  in Megacity, Japan, a corrupt politician banishes all dogs to an island to which refuse is hauled.  (The evil politician, a sort of strong man like Donald Trump, is a member of Kobayashi clan, admirers of cats from time immemorial -- an ancient ancestor was beheaded due to a dog and, therefore, the Kobayashi's have always traditionally hated canines.)  The pretext for banning the dogs to the nasty island of garbage mountains is that the animals have developed a flu that can be transmitted to humans.  This is true but the flu is manmade.  A scientist and his female sidekick (mouthed by Yoko Ono) discover an antigen to the dog flu but the scientist is murdered to suppress his cure.  A 12-year old boy flying a cute little airplane crashes on the island -- the "little pilot" is seeking his loyal hound "Spot" who was exiled to the island three years earlier.  The "little pilot" meets a group of renegade dogs, organizes them into his posse, and, then, ultimately travels to mainland Japan to confront the Kobayashi's and save the canines trapped on the island.  The story involves much hiking around the picturesque dunes of garbage on the island, a sea voyage, dangerous rides on conveyors through trash compactors and incinerators, and much amusing byplay among the dogs.  A wild dog, or a stray, emerge as a hero and gets the girl-dog in the end:  when the feral dog admits that he still bites sometimes -- he has 'de-handed' someone at the outset of the story (Anderson likes amputations) --the female says:  "That's okay, I don't like tame animals." 

The movie is very witty, brilliantly designed with eye-popping graphics.  For some reason, it is hard to make the puppets move in planes that recede or that are thrust diagonally away from the camera.  This means that characters tends to move in two dimensions, that is simply right-to-left across decorated backgrounds.  There are many close-ups -- Anderson's mania for symmetry is such that if a dog is shown in close up on the right side of the image, the next shot will show another dog in close-up on the left side of the image, thus balancing the imagery although using two shots as opposed to one to accomplish this.  Background figures, scrupulously presented, often don't move at all.  Motion itself is highly stylized, not exactly jerky, but rather robotic.  Most shots involving framing devices to create Anderson's trademark tableaux effects.  The effect is hieroglyphic -- we seem to be watching stop-action puppets moving like figures in an Egyptian bas relief or painted frieze.  Although the imagery is stylized and stilted, the action is often violent or disgusting -- the neglected dogs have sores and open wounds on their bodies; sometimes, they vomit.  Dog and other fights are shown by a cloud with parts of bodies emerging and, then, swallowed up again in the whirlwind of opaque dust.  Most of the sequences have a somewhat flattened aspect and this comports well with the flat affect of the dogs and their dialogue -- Anderson's movies usually have precise and mannered dialogue rendered somewhat robotically and that is the case here.  The style is remarkable from beginning to end.    The effect on the viewer is that you feel like you are watching the greatest film ever made for about twenty minutes, then, you have sense of increasing entrapment which is not necessarily wholly pleasurable.  The film is so mannered that it seems sometimes a bit airless and claustrophobic.

The movie is excellent,  quite exciting throughout and emotionally satisfying.  It's an advance, I think, on The Fabulous Mr. Fox.  I have reservations about the film but those are inextricably linked to my reservations about Wes Anderson's films in general.  Attending a Wes Anderson film is like having a fantastically precocious 14 year old on the autism spectrum explaining the world to you -- interesting but, often, irritating as well.