Poster for the movie Isle of Dogs
Reference News Network reported on April 24 that the 2018 "Isle of Dogs" was released as the opening film at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, and Wes Anderson won the Silver Bear Award for Best Director for it. It's also Wes Anderson's second stop-motion animated film since 2009's The Marvelous Mr. Fox.
As we all know, animation is very laborious, and the defining animation is even more difficult, and Wes Anderson, as a director obsessed with details, spent four and a half years making "Isle of Dogs". When watching this movie in reference culture, I can't help but feel that this is a visual feast, full of a lot of details, even if you watch the second and third times, you will still feel that it is a fresh adventure.
Set in a fictional city in japan, Mayor Kobayashi claims to round up and isolate all of the city's dogs in a giant island dump in order to stop the spread of "canine flu." There, the dogs face a bleak state of survival, trying to survive by rummaging through the garbage mountain for remnants. Kobayashi's adopted son, 12-year-old Atali, stole a plane and flew to the island, determined to find his beloved pet.
Foreign media are also full of praise for the film. Variety magazine credited Anderson with accomplishing a "vertiginous feat of world architecture, where even the garbage in each picture looks carefully selected."
Let the audience experience the dog's perspective on the human
Wes Anderson with structural symmetry diagram
Wes Anderson is probably the most creative, passionate, fun, and literary independent filmmaker of The New Generation of American directors. Perhaps only Woody Allen can still accommodate the fun, metaphors and great amount of information of the "author's film" under the premise of making the film so popular and beautiful.
Isle of Dogs completely inherits all the virtues of Anderson's style, even more prominently because of stop-motion animation. In the movie "The Grand Budapest Hotel", Anderson's color matching and composition skills are so distinct; in "Isle of Dogs", its photography, soundtrack, and scene scheduling are amazing, and the art can be described as the pinnacle. Through the color of the film, the audience can perceive that Anderson's story is unlikely to be real, but incorporates elements of legend and fantasy, which coincides with the absurd details of his story.
Wes Anderson films give people a sense of intimacy that removes all self-defense.
"Isle of Dogs" has a very cute detail: instead of simply and rudely asking the dog to speak human language, it begins with subtitles stating that "the dog bark has all been translated into English". What's even more amazing is that although it is an English film, the whole process uses Japan as a background, so most of the Japanese has not been translated into subtitles. Only giving the necessary hints when the translator appears in the film can be said to be very humane for us to experience the perspective of the dogs.
There's also an interesting passage in the film where the dogs accidentally enter the incineration site when they are divided into two ways, and the surprise and frustration are full of humor.
Anderson's intention may also be here: to make the audience see the story from the perspective of a dog, and it doesn't really matter what the human says, because human language is both inflammatory and deceptive.
DissectIng Anderson's gorgeous and flexible audiovisual language, you will find that the "soul axis" of the whole movie lies in: unobtainable innocence and innocence. If Disney's fairy tales are produced on industrial assembly lines, then Anderson's "Isle of Dogs" is a fairy tale that is handcrafted.
Why are dogs not cats?
Dogs and hearts are cherished
Interestingly, Japan has always been known as a country of "cat slaves" and "shovelers", but Anderson chose to use the perspective of dogs.
Perhaps this is because in the human context the "dog" represents loyalty. The Daily Mirror's assessment of Isle of Dogs may be more convincing: "These dogs are starving, dirty, sick, and only orphaned children remember who is man's best friend." ”
There have always been many cat and dog pet movies. Film and television works with dogs as the protagonists, such as "The Story of Hachiko the Loyal Dog" and "The Mission of a Dog", in which the dogs are all good human partners who make people tear up. In works with cats as the protagonists, such as "Garfield" and "City of Cats", cats and cats are mostly representatives of laziness, wandering, freedom and high coldness. Even in the popular cultural context, related to "cat raising" are "Buddhist youth" and "home culture".
Dogs will fight on the island, but if they are replaced by cats, exile on an island may not be a big problem, cat noodles are more at ease in the garbage dump, and there are even questions "how to make cats not interested in garbage cans"?
In addition, perhaps "Isle of Dogs" has an implicit meaning — whether it is a little bit of initial loyalty to Attali, or human beings are easily seduced by Mayor Kobayashi, it seems to carry a kind of blind obedience.
The reason why the brother "leader" of the guardian dog "Dot" has become the successor of the guard dog is also because of this strong sense of mission. But maybe it's also a form of "servility"? It's just that the servility of dogs to humans is, in the eyes of humans, loyal and taken for granted.
There is also a detail in the film - dogs vote when they are doing team activities, does the director compare dogs with humans in terms of political blindness? This may be the thinking that "Isle of Dogs" brings to the outside world.
Japanese Cultural and Political Metaphors
Rich In Japanese elements
Wes Anderson is well versed in Japanese culture, and he especially likes Akira Kurosawa's films. So you can see all kinds of original Japanese elements in "Inuyasha", which some people describe as "swallowing and spitting it out, perfectly restored". The film is full of ukiyo-e painting style, and Katsushika Hokusai's famous aomizu wave, cherry blossoms, sumo wrestling, haiku, sake elements can be seen everywhere, and more obviously, the Japanese drum background music in the film makes people can't help but hum it catchy.
In Isle of Dogs, elements of Japanese culture are like haute couture, and what is even more valuable is that there is a strong social message behind the delicate seams, which is different from previous Wes Anderson films - "Isle of Dogs" is full of political metaphors. Japan, as a world war II country that was once shrouded in militarism and military dictatorship, is very much in line with the story that happened in "Isle of Dogs".
In the movie, Mayor Kobayashi deliberately unleashes the plague virus of dogs, inciting all kinds of alarmist remarks, pitting humans against dogs and hating each other. It is precisely because of this that the sympathy between the incomprehensible Attalee and the guardian dog "Dot" is even more moving.
Movies are both good and evil, and they are told in a gentle way. There are two very elegant "bloody moments" in the film — live salmon and live octopus used to make sashimi sushi— and even a sizable close-up of a meticulous cut, given that this was food for the imprisoned leaders of the scientific school, who was then poisoned. In the end, when Mayor Kobayashi repents and is willing to do a kidney transplant with Atali, it is also a living flesh and blood scene, but such bloodiness represents good thoughts at this time.
If you think of the Japanese student movement of the 1960s, these film scenes seem to be more worthy of people's fun. (Text/Zhu Qiqi)