Tag: Isle of Dogs

Week in Review: April 9th – April 15th, 2018

Max MayoLeave a comment

The New Yorker

Gemini – Aaron Katz’s glitzy new mumble-noir. As the title would suggest, this film is about twins, and I would contend that it is about two interrelated sets of twin relationships. The first pair is that of movie star Heather (Zoey Kravitz) and her personal assistant Jill (Lola Kirke). After setting up this pair’s intimate friendship, Heather is ~spoilers~ murdered, shot dead by the same gun that Jill had leant her the night before. As the prime suspect, Jill must evade the LAPD and the stylish, loquacious detective on the case (John Cho), as she scours the city for clues to solve her friend’s murder. The second Gemini relationship is that of Los Angeles and the film noir genre. On this front, Gemini does not fair well in a direct comparison with any auteur-directed, LA-set neo-noir made this century; Mulholland Dr., Brick, Drive, and Inherent Vice pretty much run the gambit and each of those are certainly more, well, let’s say narratively consequential. Which is not to say that this film doesn’t carve out its own space. The film’s strength lies in the writing, all by Katz, which resembles a fusion of delectable noir-isms and twentysomething speak – hashtags, slang, apps, etc.

Jealousy – Philippe Garrel’s 2013 effort La jalousie is his first entry in a recent trilogy on love. Starring his son Louis, the film elliptically picks at a series of frayed relationship’s detailing the role that jealousy plays in motivating relationship, parenting and career decisions. The choice to shoot on film in sumptuous black & white is effective in delineating these character motives and in targeting a particular male obliviousness. I’m unfamiliar with Garrel’s other work so I’m at a loss for context, but this picture felt a lot like watching a Éric Rohmer film from the 1960’s only without the humor or playfulness. I prefer the Rohmer.

Isle of Dogs

The Caucasian Chalk Circle – Bertolt Brecht’s modernist epic play within a play was entirely new to me. Beginning in a post-WWII Soviet Union town, a group of townspeople debate how to rebuild their economy with a local administrator. Reaching an impasse, the group suggests they put on a play that they’ve been working on to clarify their current concerns. This new play, set in medieval times, tells the tale of a royal baby, abandoned by its mother during a bloody regime change. The baby is found by a young woman named Grusha, who listens to her conscience and risks her life to rescue the child. The majority of the plot follows Grusha on the run, struggling to find conditions suitable to raise the child, culminating in a trial to determine the child’s proper home. Despite the fairy tale ending, I think the play is about how in times of great upheaval society’s only way to deal with the moral and ethical dilemmas of the present is to seek refuge in a past that tends to be inadequate, rendered obsolete by the very forces causing the upheaval. That things work out here for the people who do the right thing is tongue-in-cheek, a fantasy that Brecht forces the audience to retreat out of into a reality that inevitably proves harsher. This production all-around was scrappy and inventive, spearheaded by three terrific performances. The electric guitar led, synth-backed folk song sequences (did I mention this play is part musical and features a singing narrator?) made the evening particularly strange.

You Were Never Really Here – This is one of the best movies of the year. Its raw, wounded, dark, terrifying yet beautiful, depressive and deeply mournful. It’s an uncomfortable movie because it takes you to emotional places that most people have never been before. Its traumatized. Its an American tragedy. . . And yet hope. It was a beautiful day today.

Isle of Dogs

Max Mayo3 Comments

This is basically a defense of Wes Anderson, which is a position I’d never dreamed I would be in 10 years ago.

Wes Anderson, above all else, is an aesthete and his films are extensions of his personal style. I’ve come to terms with his output being more about presentation than what is presented. And in fact, only when we stop protesting what he isn’t and address what he is, can we actually criticize him.

Though there is nothing overly new or rich about the characters, story, or themes in Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, from an animation perspective alone this film is worth seeing. Anderson creatively synthesizes cutting edge stop-motion animation with Japanese woodblock print imagery, kabuki and bunraku theater influences to create images and sequences that are easily some of the best in his œuvre, and some of the best in animation.

Buried in Anderson’s style fixations is his ethos of individualism, personal duty, social civics, and common morals. Again, he’s not treading new thematic or psychological ground, but he is finding new, unique and interesting ways to express himself. That is more than most artists ever achieve. In his commitment to this ethos, and as an auteur with substance, I see much more in common between Anderson and Robert Bresson or Quentin Tarantino, than I do Michael Bay.

Now for the cultural appropriation question, for which this film has drawn much ire. Overall, I found this film’s approach to be well-meaning and indeed respectful of Japanese culture. The lengths to which Anderson goes to carefully emulate Japanese theater, woodblock printing and cinema speaks volumes. I liken this film more to his masterwork The Grand Budapest Hotel than The Darjeeling Limited. The latter film renders the Indian subcontinent as a colorful, exotic backdrop for white man-child angst, while the former is an example of a film that intelligently and creatively engages with a foreign culture. In fact, I would like to see more filmmakers attempt what Anderson is doing here. And finally, as a challenge for any criticisms, I think most of the claims of foul play could (and would) still be argued even if Anderson had made the opposite choices. This begs the question, is what is being criticized actually the problem, or is the problem that people shouldn’t create artistic projects that engage with cultures foreign to the artist. Obviously there is a line for cultural appropriation, but I do not think this film approaches it.

All of this is to say that I found Isle of Dogs to be a charmingly slight, or slightly charming, film and a must-see for animation fans. Oddly, my biggest complaint with it is that there are not nearly enough dogs in it!