It’s a dog of a life on a canine isle
In a dystopian near-future (and how many times have I written that line in the past few years?) a doggy plague – in both senses of the word – strikes mainland Japan.
The dogs are too numerous for some people’s comfort and the dogs are becoming ill with a form of canine influenza which – we are told – is threatening to jump species.
Invoking a centuries-old feud between the cat-loving Kobayashi dynasty who now hold the mayorship of the fictional city of Megasaki and the few remaining dog-lovers in the prefecture, the corrupt and totalitarian mayor banishes all dogs to Trash Island, an abandoned industrial site and refuse dump a few miles offshore.
Months later, Megasaki is bereft of hounds, while Trash Island is home to hundreds. They form into packs, squabble over what scraps of food there are and spread endless rumours and conspiracy theories on their plight and futures.
Driven by his love of his own once-guard dog Spot (of course) the mayor’s adopted son and ward Atari steals a plane and crash lands on the island, determined to rescue his dog and to find the truth behind the mayor’s schemes.
(I’m guessing the homophone is intentional) is Wes Anderson’s
best friend.
Anderson resurrects the stopmotion animation technique of
and tells his tale with an amazing – truly breathtakingly beautiful – range of sets and tableaux. The film unfolds against richly layered dioramas, painstakingly and wittily detailed. Viewed only as an expression of the model-makers’ and puppeteers’ art, then is a flat-out masterpiece of design and craft. What was astonishing in has evolved into something even greater.
But all the beauty and care in the world adds up to nothing if the story can’t hold our attention. And this might be this film’s greatest triumph. Anderson has occasionally let us down with thin plots and characters who seemed more like droll mannequins than living people. But in Anderson made me care more about the fate of a cloth puppet street-dog than he did with any of the cast of
or
The voices – Bill Murray, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, F Murray Abraham and many others – are all superb, bringing some real pathos and heart to the puppets’ limited expressiveness. A late cameo from Harvey Keitel actually had at least one person in the theatre in tears. As someone who used to get choked up and misty eyed when one of my chickens bit the dust, I can only sympathise.
Anderson gets accused occasionally of treating his settings as not much more than backdrops to his storytelling, with no obvious attempt to be truthful, or even respectful, to the countries he sets his films in.
Personally, I heard the entitled musings of the cast of
– more aware of their own neuroses than they were of the entirety of India outside their train window – as Anderson’s own droll self-loathing.
Likewise, Greta Gerwig’s American exchange student and crusading journalist in has been catching flak as a ‘‘white saviour’’ trope of the worst sort. But I’m choosing to read her as a knowing satire of the same. Maybe I’m being naive and generous. Your opinion may well be different from mine.
is a layered, beautiful and engrossing film. If you’ve ever liked Wes Anderson before, it will quite probably be one of your favourite and bestremembered films of 2018.