Original title: Isle of Dogs · Wes Anderson · USA · 2017 · Script: Wes Anderson (about the story of Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Kunichi Nomura, Jason Schwartzman) · Interpreters: Animation.
Original title: To the hilt · Xavier Legrand · France · 2017 · Script: Xavier Legrand · Interpreters: Animation. Léa Drucker, Denis Menochet Thomas Gioria…
For some time now, Wes Anderson's cinema has fallen into a kind of self-referential complacency that is perceived in the way he constructs his stories.. Anderson seems to have found the right recipe for his way of approaching his stories, although his works begin to suffer from a feeling of formula that, definitely, reduces the chances of surprise for those who, like a server, We have been following his career for a long time.. In summary, which perhaps at first seemed fresh and original, Today he seems burdened by a series of tics that already seem to surpass the idea of a style brand., especially because in Anderson's cinema, unlike what happens with other filmmakers, These ways are so evident that they cannot escape even the least attentive viewer of what we critics understand as formal solutions.. Renew or die.
dog island takes us to Japan and, specifically, to Megasaki city, a mega-city that easily reminds us of contemporary Tokyo and where dogs and humans coexist in harmony. Before the beginning of the story, The film gives us background on a power war for the city government led by two opposing families., one next to the cats and one next to the dogs. Dog supporters won, which allowed its population to grow exponentially. everything was going well, until a sudden illness began to affect the animals. To protect yourself from the epidemic, Mayor Kobayashi decrees the expulsion of the dogs, those he exiles on an island where the city's waste is abandoned: Garbage Island. Over there, dogs will start a new life far from the comforts of their human homes, organizing by gangs to survive. but one day, A strange ship lands on Junk Island piloted by a child, Atari, who comes looking for his pet. To help you in this mission, will feature a gang of five hungry and desperate dogs.
With these elements, Anderson once again resorts to the stop-motion technique as he did in Fantastic Mr.Fox. And that is where we find the highlights of this production. As Anderson has stated in various media, dog island es, first of all, a tribute to japanese cinema, with an eye especially on directors like Yasujiro Ozu or Akira Kurosawa, as well as in the long tradition that it has in the production of science fiction and monster films, where animated figures have always had so much weight. But, above all, I think that where the director of Life aquatic finds its greatest point of attraction is in a culture with which it undoubtedly has many aesthetic affinities. Anderson and his team of animators, surrounded by the futuristic premises of the plot, They build a universe where the real or possible is mixed with the purely invented to give their work that halo of fantasy that exudes. And that is where the public will also find its most attractive point., in the work of construction and design of settings and characters. In his last production, Anderson does a truly commendable exercise in meticulousness.. In each plane, We will find lots of details with which to delight our avid viewers' retinas.. From a technical point of view, a work full of virtuosity, a real enjoyment from start to finish. Just watch the scene with which the film's titles start to understand what we mean..
Hay, at least, two ways of analyzing the background of the story that Anderson (also co-writer of the project) puts on screen. First of all, dog island It can be interpreted as a plea against the manipulations of power. As we progress through the story, We are discovering that Mayor Kobayashi's interests go beyond protecting the population of Megasaki from the epidemic that affects dogs.. With an aesthetic that is close to v for vendetta (It also sometimes reminds us of Ciudadano Kane by Orson Wells or Metropolis de Fritz Lang), Anderson and his team want to make us reflect on the propaganda mechanisms that power uses to manipulate the masses.. No less evident is the argument in defense of canids that also underlies this production.. Abandoned by humans, dogs fight to regain their place in the world, away from trash and abandonment. But, more than anything, dog island It is a beautiful fable in favor of friendship, love, hope, loyalty and necessity (or difficulty) of communication between humans and that nature from which we have been distancing ourselves, so far, that we no longer even understand their language. We won't say more.
However, as we said at the beginning, Anderson's latest work weighs on a problem, let's say, of excessive mannerism. At least since Trip to Darjeeling and with greater profusion in the aforementioned Fantastic MR.Fox, His cinema stands out for its very particular staging.. The use of parallel tracking shots, the constant search for symmetry in composition, a representation of the frontal scenes, almost theatrical, together with a montage marked by the rhythm of the dialogues or the voice-over (omnipresent in his films) These are some of the resources with which Anderson constructs his stories.. From the combination of these elements arises, For example, his sense of humor, marked by the cadence or musicality achieved in the game between texts and image, in the looks of his characters, in unexpected gestures in a second or very close-up of scenes. However, The fluidity of the narrative depends on the good articulation of all these elements.. It worked well in Fantastic MR.Fox, but much worse in The Grand Budapest Hotel and with many difficulties in this dog island where the excessive repetition of these resources makes it fall at times into excessive reiteration. A less measured time, the slowdown to which some sequences are subjected due to an excess of dialogue and information (almost everything that happens is thoroughly explained, and there is a lot to explain) they jam the story, creating in the viewer the idea that what is not moving forward or is moving too slowly. In summary, dog island offers the viewer a very good story, shot with care, whose rhythm, however, is conditioned by a very overloaded literary script, a bit cumbersome in some passages. And all this makes it lose that freshness that we talked about at the beginning and that was its original brand.. The question we ask ourselves is whether, at this point in his career, Anderson should not try to explore new aesthetic horizons and leave that path amply explored..
French director Xavier Legrand's first full-length work suffers from structural or strategic problems. Joint custody It begins with a particularly notable sequence. a couple, Mary and Antoine, They are in front of the judge. In the middle of the divorce process, Both parties in litigation are at stake for joint custody of the children and, especially, by Julien, the little nine year old. Assisted by their lawyers, They both explain their reasons, pending the decision of the magistrate investigating his case. But things get complicated once the new visitation regime begins.. Antoine picks up Julien to spend the weekend together, while his mother puts up all possible obstacles to prevent him, although finally he has no choice but to give in and hand him over to the father. Conflicts between both parties will be constant. And in the middle, poor Julien, who tries to handle the situation as best he can. However, We will discover that Antoine's intentions with his son are not as noble as he says.. On the contrary, Antoine uses the child to harass his mother whom it seems he wants to get back.. In the end, hell breaks loose.
Without a doubt one of the values on which this production is based is the team of actors. Xavier Legrand, screenwriter of this work, puts all the meat on the grill in the construction of situations that bring into play the psychology of characters full of nuances. And he does, besides, allowing these psychologies to reveal themselves through their behaviors, its contradictions, fruit of that articulation, well carved, at least, during two thirds of the story. It is noteworthy, at this point, the work of Denis Ménchonet and Léa Drucker who do a truly commendable job of containment. But without a doubt the one who will get all the attention of the public will be the actor Thomas Gioria in the role of young Julien. Gioria, who faces his first performance for the cinema, manages to transmit with stark credibility the doubts and uncertainties faced by that childish soul split by a conflict that places it in the middle, exchange commodity in a war that is above him.
But as the movie progresses, Much of this work of containment and subtlety is becoming somewhat cruder.. To understand each other, Xavier Legrand poses an initial situation, the conflict of the right to joint custody of children during a divorce process. And in that situation, His story seems to take pains to elucidate the complications that all of this entails.: the dilemmas posed by this confrontation between parties to defend their particular interests, the complicated situation of children or the no less dangerous role of justice and its many nooks and crannies. Y, At least for the first two thirds of the movie, Legrand continues playing to make the viewer believe that this is the terrain he is playing on. To a large extent, during much of the footage, It seems that Julien's conflict centers on how to emotionally escape from that no man's land in which the two parties in conflict have placed him.. But all of this is suddenly left off the board when we discover that none of it is relevant., leaving the entire conflict in a case of harassment.
Legrand raises an initial question on a tricky issue: shared custody. But then he gets rid of it, leaving that subtlety and meticulousness behind to enter a simpler portrait., that of the stalker. What until a certain moment had been developing in a suggestive way, leaving it up to the viewer himself to tie together the loose ends, then it remains a mere enunciation. In the end, there is a good, there is a bad, and that's it. More than deciding whether or not to censor Antoine's behavior, The problem is that Legrand wanted to make two films in one. In the first, would address the issue of joint custody (topic in which, if we establish the logical causal relationship, take part), In the second he would describe a case of gender violence or harassment. And I fear that the two come into contradiction and do not end up working together..
But it is perhaps in this last part of the film where things also decline from a formal point of view.. In Joint custody, Xavier Legrand does not demonstrate a particularly striking cinematographic grammar. The interesting thing happens within the scene, between the characters. But it is in the management of the tempo of the action where we find its greatest weaknesses.. Legrand appeals to the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Haneke as some of his references, and especially in the treatment of film tension. But Legrand makes a mistake that neither Hitchcock nor Haneke would ever make.: give the viewer what they want. We will not reveal anything. Just highlight that it delays the solution of the story so much and does so in such a forced way that it loses all suspense and, with this, the intensity and dramatic credibility of what we are seeing. I'm not saying that what Legrand says can't happen., but from a cinematographic point of view it ends up being a bit Manichean. His desire not to disturb the viewer is so evident., that does not even dare to reach where reality often takes us in such a tragic way. GERARDO LEON
