It’s no secret that
after the films I’ve made thus far, I am turning towards genre experiments. The
first installment of these is White God, inspired mostly by preposterous and
increasingly rancorous present-day social relations. In my view, parallel to
the questionable advantages of globalization, a caste-system has become more
sharply defined: superiority has truly become the privilege of white, Western
civilization, and it is nearly impossible for us not to take advantage of it. Yes,
us. After all, we are the members of this privileged mass. Hence, I would like
to create a film which allows a glimpse of the passions raging on the other
side, criticizing our detestable self-confidence, full of lies and lopsided
truths, set on domesticating the minorities while actually wishing only to
destroy them, hypocritically denying inequalities, not believing in either
peace or in peaceful cohabitation. Nevertheless, I have chosen animals as the
subject instead of minorities. I did this, because I wanted to focus freely on
this sensitive subject; as freely and with the least amount of taboos as
possible. Therefore, I tell the story of animals, a dispossessed species that
was once man’s best friend. But man has betrayed them, and in turn, they revolted
against their former masters and companions in order to validate their
existence.
The film can be
described by mingling the words adventure, revenge, rebellion, and heroism. I
would like the topoi of vengeance films and the allegorical qualities of animal
stories to merge in this film in a dynamic, thrilling, and undeniably emotive
way. There is no question that when faced with betrayal and friendship, the
audience must take sides. I would like Lili, the thirteen year-old girl, to be
our mirror. Through her actions, we will be confronted by the mechanism of
confabulations. Her coming of age will be the alarming example of what we hope
never to raise our children to become. Still, because Lili is a courageous girl
with a pure heart, in the end, she is brave enough not to step in line ... our
line; the line of fathers and parents. She has the courage to rebel and
contradict, to lay down her arms, even at the possible cost of her own life.
My goal is for us to
root for Hagen and Lili together. For Hagen to fight back; for Lili to
understand that Hagen’s rebellion is just. By way of this, we too can be
cleansed and return home with the knowledge that the decision is in our hands:
we have the choice not to become phony, deceitful adults. This film interweaves
melo-drama with the characteristics of adventure and vengeance movies. My
intention was to demonstrate that mankind and beasts share the same universe.
Only if we are able to position ourselves in the place of different species do
we have the chance to lay down our arms.
─Director’s Statement, Kornél Mundruczó
While an entire industry has arisen around animation or
computer special effects in movies, less noticeable are the use of animal
trainers, especially when considering how minimal their influence usually is
when conceiving the artistic vision of a film.
Perhaps more so than the director himself, the driving force behind the
success of this film must be attributed to animal trainer Árpád Halász and
animal department coordinator Teresa Ann Miller, as the performances from the
more than 280 dogs are shockingly convincing, both when seen individually, but also
collectively as a group, where the choreography of the animals is so uniquely
original that it harkens back to the extraordinary artistic vision of recently
deceased Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó, to whom this film is dedicated,
whose films THE RED AND THE WHITE (1967) and RED PSALM (1972) feature
breathtaking camera shots of horses, where no one choreographs the movements of
horses like Jancsó. While Kornél Mundruczó
is a prominent Hungarian director whose last five features have all played and/or
premiered at Cannes, it’s still somewhat surprising that this film was chosen
as the Best Film in the Un Certain Regard category that included Lisandro
Alonso’s JAUJA (2014), one of the highest rated films at Cannes from 2014, Cannes
critics ratings, (especially considering the Jury President was fellow
Argentine director Pablo Trapero), but also Ruben Östlund’s Force
Majeure (Turist) (2014) and Wim Wenders superb documentary The
Salt of the Earth (2014) that was awarded a special prize. That said, the story bears a startling
resemblance in theme and spirit (not to mention a title inversion) to Sam
Fuller’s WHITE DOG (1982), as both are allegorical comments on the human
condition, where the treatment of dogs is a harsh reminder of how we view and
treat minorities, as if they are a subhuman species. While the dogs are extraordinary, along with
the cinematography of Marcell Rév, the humans in the picture never rise above
stereotypical depictions, where the beautiful handling of the animals is
undermined by the poorly written performances of the humans, especially the
male characters who come across as heavy-handed brutes, a common characteristic
that recurs in every Mundruczó film, perhaps systematic of the ultra-repressive,
male dominated Eastern European political regimes. Nonetheless, these poorly written characters
undermine all of Mundruczó’s efforts, as they appear one dimensional and overly
simplistic, lacking the kind of complexity most of us witness every day, where
humans are instead perceived as a work in progress.
What perhaps distinguishes this work is its adherence to the
horror genre, especially the rebellion of a mistreated animal species, using a
sci-fi twist that veers into Hitchcock’s The Birds
(1963), becoming an apocalyptic cautionary tale. While its aim may be to peel back a layer of
grotesque human behavior, it lacks the depth and poetry of Bresson’s Au
Hasard Balthazar (1966), arguably the greatest animal movie ever made,
defined by the extraordinary breadth of its grace and compassion, and instead
provides a steroid-fueled version of unleashed anger gone amok. At the center of the film is a dog named
Hagen, where everything that happens is seen through his eyes as he goes from
one harrowing adventure to the next.
Initially he is the companion to Lili (Zsófia Psotta), a child of
divorce, a young, somewhat sullen 13-year old girl who is seen being dropped
off by her mother with her estranged father Dániel (Sándor Zsótér), where
friction immediately develops as he lives in a building where dogs are not
welcome. Neighbors complain, Dániel
denies he has a dog, forcing Lili to lock him up in the bathroom, which of
course leads to continual barking coming from his home, which she’s able to
calm by playing her trumpet. We discover
they are in the center of an even larger controversy, as Budapest is charging a
government imposed “mongrel” fine, an exorbitant tax to own mixed breed dogs, preferring
pure bred, pedigreed dogs, causing owners to unload their mutts onto the street
to avoid payment, where the animal shelters are soon overrun, creating an
epidemic of wild dogs running free. Following
an incident in school where Hagen’s presence nearly gets her kicked out of the
band, where her music instructor refuses to allow a dog, Lili runs out of
options. Despite fighting desperately to
hold onto him, finding the ban cruel and hurtful, as dogs offer a friendship
often lacking in society, her father forces Lili to get rid of the dog, leaving him on the side of the road and driving
away, forcing Hagen to fend for himself.
Like a subspecies of creatures, the stray dogs are forced to survive
against impossible odds, constantly chased by sadistic dogcatchers, where they
quickly learn evasive maneuvers. The audience
is quickly sucked into an “us against the world” mentality, as the dogs are
besieged at every turn by a rigid authority that wants to get rid of them. Hagen’s cycle of survival is emotionally
taxing, as at first he survives by his wits, gaining the audience’s sympathies,
often through humorous methods before being tricked by an underhanded street
beggar that sells him to a ruthless dog fight trainer who’s only interest is
making money, converting Hagen into a ferocious Alpha male that is brutally trained
to rip any opponent to shreds or be killed himself.
Other than the blunt realism of PLEASANT DAYS (2002), which
remains arguably his best film, Mundruczó has used artificiality to almost
mythic effect, where JOHANNA (2005) is the most uniquely outrageous, a
full-blown 20th century expressionist opera on sin and redemption, while the
stunning visual beauty of DELTA (2008) defies the Edenesque brutality that
follows, all suggesting a world gone wrong, a poetic variation of Paradise Lost. Similarly, WHITE GOD turns into a nightmarish
fever dream where Hagen’s transition from affectionate pet to mad dog killer defies
belief, escaping from his cage where he’s continually seen wandering desperately
through a jagged urban wasteland charged with ever more difficult obstacles to
overcome, eventually captured yet again, placed in a kind of solitary
confinement for obstinate dogs, a private room that may as well be a doggy
death row where he witnesses another dog being put to sleep, where incredibly
Hagen glances up at a television playing Tom
and Jerry cartoons, perhaps a wry comment on how easily we’re appeased
while surrounded by human savagery. Apparently
this is the inspiration he needs, as literally moments from suffering a similar
fate he leads a death defying escape, causing a canine revolt on the proportion
of the Spartacus
(1960) slave rebellion, where the chaos that ensues takes the city by storm and
the stunned populace by surprise, where the city is literally overrun by wild
packs of liberated dogs, all of whom have been treated with sadistic brutality
and malevolent disdain. Led by Hagen, the
unleashed animal fury of hundreds of mixed bred dogs racing through the streets
in mass is an impressive sight, like water gushing through a sudden opening in
a dam, where the accompanying surge of freedom couldn’t be more powerfully
expressed. This kind of metaphorical
furor must resonate even more powerfully in Eastern Europe where so many
nations were forced to submit to a post-war Soviet military presence, leading
to lengthy periods of occupation.
Unfortunately, the film meanders into mystifyingly strange territory,
where the human presence simply deflates the build-up of energy, resembling the
mayhem in the streets caused by King
Kong (1933), “often imitated, never equaled,” or GODZILLA (1954), where
Dániel is actually seen with a Rambo-like flamethrower to protect himself
against this formidable enemy, adding a cartoonish element to an otherwise
riveting moment, leading to an ultimate showdown between man and beast. While the idea itself can be dramatically compelling,
the execution leaves something to be desired, lost in the reverie of a
childlike innocence where a naïve hope becomes the only option. The final sequence is a stunner, filled with
sorrow and pity, which may pull at the heartstrings while viewers may also be
equally astounded at how they could pull it off without CGI effects. The human depiction is overly predictable, while
giving human traits to animals is always a precarious ordeal, yet the film does
offer a voice to the voiceless, where it at least hopes to build empathy for
those who have been mistreated and brutalized the most, where their
marginalized status is seemingly taken for granted in the growing complacency
of the modern world.
