Director Wes Anderson with his cast of characters
ISLE OF
DOGS
A-
USA Germany (101 mi) 2018
‘Scope d: Wes Anderson
Endlessly charming and exquisitely entertaining, offering a
treasure-trove of cultural references, this beautifully conceived, subversive
venture into Japanese culture is an absolute delight, inventing an imaginary
world that in the worst way resembles our own, with political corruption
becoming the norm, where a deceived populace is fed a string of lies from a
populist politician thoroughly entrenched in demagoguery and fear-mongering,
though viewed from the point of view of a tragically rejected animal formerly
known as man’s best friend. Set 20 years into the future, Megasaki City,
Japan has become an openly pro-cat culture that defiantly rejects dogs,
stooping to any level to sway public opinion against the whole lot of them,
leading dirty tricks campaigns to smear their good names, eventually infecting
virtually every dog in the city with dog flu, then spreading lies and creating
panic by informing the public this threatens to infect the human population as
well. Getting a firm mandate to completely eradicate dogs from society
altogether, they are eventually quarantined, and in a nod to John Carpenter in Escape
from New York (1981), the entire dog population is rounded up and sent to
an isolated uninhabited island of toxic waste and chemical ruin, not to mention
garbage as far as the eye can see in a place called Trash Island. While
not as far-fetched as it might seem, this exact same solution was proposed by
Nazi Germany in the summer of 1940, known as the Madagascar Plan,
with Germany exiling Europe’s entire Jewish population to the African island of
Madagascar, eventually scrapped for the Final
Solution, resurfacing again during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s before
the advent of protease inhibitor drugs, when a whirlwind of inaccurate
information and negative publicity plagued the minds of ordinary citizens who
wanted all those infected with the disease quarantined and sent to isolated
internment camps. Only when people stopped dying did the hysteria from a
panicked public calm down and a more rational public policy perspective was
developed. Japan is the only nation that has actually been devastated by
nuclear attack, the same culture that brought us GODZILLA (1954), a prehistoric
sea monster, and a mutant survivor empowered by radiation that somehow ends up
on the loose causing chaos in the streets of Tokyo, much like King
Kong (1933) rampaged through the streets of New York. What works so
beautifully is allowing the endless imagination of Wes Anderson’s whimsical
universe to mix with this same lowbrow Japanese culture to create what will
surely amount to a cult classic. Propelled by the beating drums of
Japanese taiko drums that resemble a percussive attack mode, musical score by
Alexandre Desplat, this is the longest stop-motion animation film on record,
given a Hollywood A-list of actors doing voice impressions, filled with wry
comedic touches throughout, becoming a cautionary tale on abuse of power, yet
remaining poignant through the sheer brilliance of Anderson’s filmmaking.
Written by Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman,
and Kunichi Nomura (the voice of Mayor Kobayashi), the political master of
ceremony is Mayor Kobayashi, a gruff Toshirô Mifune style character that views
his city as a model of decorum, with the spotlight always shining on him, while
behind the scenes his villainous henchman Major Domo (Akira Takayama) is
carrying out the dirty work, with legions of adoring fans cheering him on, many
carrying small lap cats in their arms or wearing anti-dog insignia.
What’s curious is how this information is transmitted, as there is a television
commentator (Frances McDormand) live on the scene translating what’s happening
in Japanese into English. But before the mayor carries out his edict, a
little backstory is required, introducing Atari (Koyu Rankin), the Mayor’s
12-year-old nephew who was orphaned at the age of 9 when his own parents were
lost in a tragic bullet train accident. The Mayor awarded Atari an army
specialized guard dog named Spots to watch after him and be his bodyguard, a
rare breed, a short-haired Oceanic speckle-eared sport hound fitted with a
transmitter attached to Atari so they were virtually inseparable, that is until
the Mayor made Spots the first dog shipped to Trash Island, despite the
contentions of a leading scientist, Professor Watanabe (Akira Ito), who claims
to be close to finding a cure. On the island, a kind of LORD OF THE FLIES
(1963) hierarchy takes over, with packs of dogs fighting over scraps of food,
reduced to a cloud of dust, where the dogs astonishingly enough speak perfect
English. As we are introduced to one band of brothers, their
personalities take over, including Rex ,the always sarcastic Edward Norton, the
lead commentator and de facto democratic leader, quick to take a vote, where
he’s constantly reminded that he’s not the leader, King, Bob Balaban, a
one-time dog spokesman for doggy chow, Duke, Jeff Goldblum, who seems to have a
telepathic hotline to the latest gossip, Boss, Bill Murray, a former mascot for
a Little League baseball team, and Chief, Bryan Cranston, the only stray in the
group, who constantly reminds us, “I bite.” As they distinguish
themselves in the trash heap, having to contend with deportations, prison
camps, and the threat of extermination, we are transported back to a Japanese
high school classroom setting where we are introduced to an American foreign
exchange student Tracy Walker (Greta Gerwig) as the science class watches a
news report of young Atari commandeering a prop plane to Trash Island in search
of his dog, immediately capturing her heart. A romance and quirky
adventure story soon intertwine.
Our pack of dogs greets Atari after he crash lands on top of
a trash heap, but amusingly none of the dogs speak Japanese, so the “little
pilot” curiously remains unsubtitled throughout. Holding out a picture of
his dog, the entire crew sets out on an adventure to find him, exploring the
far regions of the island, revealing dark historical secrets in the
process. But first, they have to contend with a special ops militarized
rescue team, complete with a Terminator-style
robotic steel dog and trapping nets that kidnap Atari. Surviving by the
skin of their teeth, Chief is left hobbled by injuries afterwards, running into
a perfectly groomed purebred showdog, Nutmeg (Scarlett Johansson), with
papers! Trained to do tricks, she performs one for him in his dire
predicament, informing him what’s missing in the trick, like juggling balls
with her feet, which is quickly visualized onscreen in his imagination.
She’s the one who convinces Chief, who mistrusts all pet owners, to help the
little pilot find his dog, using impeccable logic, “Because he’s a twelve year
old boy, dogs love those.” While at the same time, Tracy goes on an
extensive journalistic search for the truth, exposing a massive suppression of
the Science Party, who quickly develop a cure for dog flu, but the mayor
refuses to distribute the product, as dog disease is the perfect rallying cry
for his party, which is only gaining momentum in support. To make sure
word never gets out, the nefarious Major Domo poisons the sushi served to
Professor Watanabe under house arrest, calling it a disgraced suicide.
Meanwhile, to the astonishing 60’s tune that no one remembers, The West Coast Pop Art
Experimental Band - I Won't Hurt You - YouTube (2:23), the crew walks to
the other end of the island, crossing abandoned factories, a trash-processing
plant, and remnants of what was an experimental canine torture chamber, which
recalls horrific images of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1966), as these remaining
dogs have all been seriously altered and deformed. It’s here they
discover Spots, the leader of the pack, protector of the infirmed, suddenly
spurred into action when once again Mayor Kobayashi sends in another drone team
with more robotic dogs, with Spots and his small army joining forces with Atari
to the rousing musical refrains from Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI (1954),
unleashing a secret counter maneuver against the invaders, where a flashback
sequence also reveals Spots and Chief are not only the same breed, but
brothers, with Chief offering a heart-rendering story about how he blew an
opportunity to have a comfortable home, remaining exiled afterwards, ostracized
from society. This touching family reunion plays into the finale, along
with a hacker from Tracy’s class who sabotages the mayor’s doomsday scenario,
as well as Tracy’s extensive journalistic exposé in her student newspaper The Daily Manifesto, building to an
extraordinary finale that suggests buried underneath the political morass of
corruption and deceit lies true human virtue, which offers more hopeful
outcomes so long as it has a chance to see the light of day. What’s
particularly astonishing in this film is just how light-hearted and ingeniously
comical it is while also subversively probing such hideously dark themes that
personify the world we live in today. It’s like holding a mirror up to
our appalling reality that emphasizes xenophobic and racist rabble-rousing in
contemporary American politics and asking if there isn’t a better way.
While it may not be on the same level as 2012
Top Ten Films of the Year: #3 Moonrise Kingdom in reaching the pinnacle work
of Anderson’s career, it comes close and confirms what an amazing artist he is,
continuing to work at such a high level, with no one else in the world
producing anything like this.
Note
There has been a misguided outcry of criticism against Anderson’s use of a white
American high school girl, the only non-Japanese student in the class, to save
the day in the end instead of allowing a Japanese character to rise from their
own ranks to produce similar results, where suggestions of American imperial
superiority or racial backlash have fueled the extreme. Similar charges
have been leveled against Disney, by the way. Culture writer Angie Han at
Mashable, Wes
Anderson's cultural tourism undercuts the heart of 'Isle of Dogs', called
Tracy’s character a “classic example of the ‘white savior’ archetype – the
well-meaning white hero who arrives in a foreign land and saves its people from
themselves,” adding that the movie “falls into a long history of
American art othering or dehumanizing Asians, borrowing their ‘exotic’ cultures
and settings while disregarding the people who created those cultures and live
in those settings.” Prominent critics have also raised questions of cultural
appropriation, including Justin Chang at The
Los Angeles Times, Wes
Anderson's 'Isle of Dogs' is often captivating, but cultural sensitivity gets
lost in translation, who suggests “It’s in the director’s handling of the
story’s human factor that his sensitivity falters, and the weakness for racial
stereotyping that has sometimes marred his work comes to the fore…Much of the
Japanese dialogue has been pared down to simple statements that non-speakers
can figure out based on context and facial expressions…The dogs, for their
part, all speak clear American English, which is ridiculous, charming and a
little revealing…You can understand why a writer as distinctive as Anderson
wouldn’t want his droll way with the English language to get lost in
translation. But all these coy linguistic layers amount to their own form
of marginalization, effectively reducing the hapless, unsuspecting people of
Megasaki to foreigners in their own city.” To this one needs to
add…Hogwash! More celebration than appropriation, this is taking the era
of political correctness way too far, offering little to nothing in terms of
appreciating the merits of the film. Only in an era of self-obsessed
social media would these charges rise to a level of significance. While
this may matter to some and should not be dismissed, it actually misses the
heart of the film, which is overwhelmingly in Japanese, retaining the original
language, where much of the dialogue remains unsubtitled (as the dogs don’t
understand a word Atari is saying), continually emphasizing a prominent central
focus layered in feverish reverence for Japanese cultural references, where
it’s so unmistakenly a labor of love, an ode to Japanese arts and cinema
(Anderson met with the curator of Japanese Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art and his storyboard artists visited the collections at the Victoria and
Albert Museum in London), which is essentially what fascinated Anderson in
making this film, expressed so eloquently by Jessica Kiang from The Playlist, Wes Anderson's
'Isle Of Dogs' Is A Good Boy, A Very Good Boy [Review]:
But on a more immediate and
visceral level, the meticulous dedication and joyous commitment Anderson
displays to a set of aesthetics he clearly worships are to some extent
self-justifying. In “The Grand
Budapest Hotel” Anderson created a fictional Eastern European country in
order to exploit a loose set of cultural and aesthetic associations without
having them tied to pesky real-world history or geopolitics. And here he
creates a fictional city in what might as well be the fictional country of
Japanderson — the better to remythologize the myths that Kurosawa, Miyazaki and the whole Godzilla industry so brilliantly
exported, and that have clearly intoxicated him so thoroughly. No one
could come out of “Isle of Dogs” with a sense of disdain for Japanese culture:
Anderson’s Japanophilia is as infectious as snout fever, and peculiarly
reverent, without a shred of condescension.
Indeed, buried in amongst the
surprisingly potent political commentary (the clash between demagogues and
experts; the limits of democracy when decisiveness is needed; the value of
journalism in the age of propagandist “fake news”) there is a further
undercurrent about the value of outsider perspectives, and how much better we
are when we blur the lines. It’s exemplified best by Alexandre Desplat’s stunning score, which combines traditional
Japanese taiko drums in a rolling, rumbling, semi-martial rhythm, with
unexpectedly whimsical and inescapably Western-sounding instrumentation –
saxophones and clarinets, even a little whistling. Like the film it
envelops and rounds out so lushly, the music is a meeting of mutually curious
and mutually complementary worlds, and like the proud, resourceful brave and
loyal dogs of this ‘Isle,’ even when they’re reunited with their masters and
fetching sticks in time-honored tradition, neither is subservient: no one is
anyone’s “pet.” As far as representation goes, the stunning, brimful,
extraordinary “Isle of Dogs” can’t really be said to do anyone’s culture a
disservice. Except cat lovers, who should probably mount a boycott.
