10. Isle of Dogs

Isle of Dogs

Director: Wes Anderson

I am a Wes Anderson fan but this film is visually cool but not as compelling as others. This stop-motion animated comedy, about children’s efforts to thwart the extermination of dogs, is Anderson’s third film in a virtual trilogy of revolt. With none of the richness of his Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s gorgeous new stop-motion tale is a funny, touching, doggy delight.  The concept of sick dogs abandoned on a Japanese garbage island seemed so self-consciously, yet Isle of Dogs is a delight: funny, touching and full of heartfelt warmth and wit. With breathtaking visuals and an uncanny eye for canine behavior, it transposes the kid-friendly charm of The Incredible Journey to the post-apocalyptic landscapes of Mad Max via the Japanese cinema of Yasujiro Ozu, and, most notably, Akira Kurosawa.

Despite its ghoulish details, Isle of Dogs retains a soft, slapstick heart. The regular fights are animated like a Tex Avery cartoon, with random limbs protruding from a swirling dust cloud. Like the dogs themselves, the stop-motion has an endearingly scratchy quality, a textured roughness contrasting with the symmetrical perfection of the frame. Working primarily at London’s 3 Mills Studios, Anderson’s team of animators keep things admirably physical with cotton-wool clouds and cellophane rivers. Images on TV screens are rendered as old-school, hand-drawn cartoons. As always, the imagery is the best part of any Anderson film. “Isle of Dogs” engages an aesthetic of the ugly.  

On one level, Isle of Dogs can be read as a parable of disenfranchisement, a story of people (rather than pets) being pushed to the margins. On another it’s a simple tale of a boy and his dog, a heartbreaker with overtones of the much-loved Hachikō story. There’s also an animal rights echo.  Interpretations are necessarily open-ended. While all barks are translated into English, the human language, much of it Japanese, is largely unsubtitled. “You don’t understand the words but you understand the emotion.” Some have argued that, rather than foregrounding canine conversation, this technique casts the Japanese characters in particular – rather than humans in general.

Perhaps a better question would be “why aren’t the Japanese people translated?” Atari, who is the catalyst for this story, remains untranslated until the very end, where most of his speech is in deference to how hot he finds Tracy, with whom he has had no prior interaction. I suppose Anderson thought he was being respectful toward Japanese speakers by giving them something only they could enjoy. Instead, it only adds an “Otherness” to Atari and his compatriots. Why can we understand Atari’s canine cohort, but not him?