Films > Film Reviews

Isle Of Dogs

Cinema City

28/03/18

Rebellious children, injured pets, maddening symmetry and deadpan comedy, this could only be the next instalment from the acclaimed and deranged mind of yours truly Wes of the Anderson.
Set in the fictional Japanese city of Megasaki 20 years into the future, this adorable tail of a dog (Spots) and his boy (Atari) follows a cohort of impoverished pooches banished to Trash Island, aka the Isle of Dogs, aka the setting for much whimsical madness and artsy shenanigans.

A story that lets you flea from your troubles, Isle of Dogs hooks you up to an IV drip of nostalgia for every Claymation, puppet show and cartoon you ever watched. There is enough here to tickle the toes of art lovers, film buffs and general appreciators of a good-old feel-good family-friendly yarn. Isle of Dogs stars some sumptuous Japanese artwork – the influences of Hiroshige and Hokusai are felt throughout, including some comedic re-imaginings of iconic paintings, as well as nods to the elaborate costumes, colourful settings and killer action sequences from film-maker extraordinaire Akira Kurosawa. There is not a western motif or sneaky American pop-culture cameo in sight; this is a film that breathes and sings the praises of Japanese culture through and through, from Taiko drumming to recreations of traditional Kabuki theatre.

Following his iconic adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox, Anderson has moved on to create his own timeless myths and fairy-tales in this film and, as incredible as Mr Fox was, it feels very much like a warm-up lap compared to this animated bonanza of awesomeness. Definitely Wes’ most politically-minded film to date, you will be hounded by corruption, coercion and a cruelty to crabs in this stunning and maniacal menagerie. Figure-headed by the Stalin-esque Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura) who, with his infuriating ability to ignore the truth even when it’s nibbling on his silver moustache, holds many parallels with a certain US president’s knuckle-headedness and intolerant rhetoric. The fear-mongering used to segregate the dogs due to an epidemic of ‘Dog Flu’ and ‘Snout Fever’ also tackles racial (or inter-species) hatred beautifully and never once feels preachy or contrived.

The film has a mangy ruggedness and unwashed feel to it. Anderson’s habitual immaculate costumes and crisp miniature-wonderland aesthetic is nowhere to be found - mutts and humans alike are bruised, torn, missing legs, eyes and kidneys (Atari spends the whole film with shrapnel embedded in his skull) and there is a drab washed-out filter over most scenes that mark this as a dramatic departure from his other, cushy and manicured works into something more violent and unsettling.

Featuring a Guess Who board game of characters, we are treated to Cranston, Norton, Murray, Goldblum, Balaban, Nomura, Watanabe, Gerwig, Ito, McDormand, Keitel, Takayama, Schreiber, Johansson, Swinton, Abraham and Ono. And if you feel like his casting credits read like one great, excessive name-drop, just imagine how much of a nightmare Anderson must be at parties.
Sadly, the heart-throb scenes don’t gel so well and felt awkwardly shoe-horned in, making the romantic entanglements feel more like blind dates than Greek Agape. Female characters in this story are largely pushed to the periphery and confined to the roles of mothers, lovers, grieving widows and bitch-fatales rather than being graced with personalities or much individuality. Greta Gerwig is the exception to the rule here as the quirky foreign-exchange student Tracy “Dammit Atari, I have a crush on you” Walker, although her character brings its own suitcase of problematic as she stumbles into Hollywood’s go-to stereotype of white saviour leading a revolution of enlightenment and free-thinking in a country that she neither understands nor grew up in.

That said, there is still much going for Isle of Dogs (does anyone else find themselves saying it as “I Love Dogs”?) and this non-stop stop-motion picture about a dog-eat-dog world of courage, discrimination and acceptance is packed to the collar with canine adorability and breath-taking whimsy.

8/10