Review of Isle of Dogs (2018) by Nightreviews — 03 Apr 2018

Audiences around the world go to see a Wes Anderson film for many reasons; imagination, creativity, wonder and most of all, amazement. A man who has crafted and added to, not only a branch of the film industry within the independent market, but an individual who arguable has his own genre of film, proves with his latest that you are able to make an independent success, commercial darling and fading animation style feature film revolutionary. After eight feature films which enrich the medium as a whole, Wes Anderson delved, for a second time, into the stop-motion foray with his ninth future film, and quite possibly his best yet with Isle of Dogs. You heard the rumours right? About Isle of Dogs? Sure, there are a ton of rumours, controversy and discussions about the auteur director’s latest film, both positive and negative (which we will discuss further into this review) including some fun facts that if you say the film’s title fast, it’s actually the equivalent of saying “I Love Dogs”, as well as arguments about cultural appropriation, hmmm.

The fact of the matter is, first and foremost, Isle of Dogs is a film that pays tribute and homage to so many of the things that Anderson loves and hold very dear to his heart. From his love to canines, to his homages to legendary filmmakers and vanguards Hayao Miyazaki and Akira Kurosawa, to his love of stop-motion animation; Anderson’s second venture into stop-motion animation is a film anchored by his passions, as well as a TRUE film for dog-lovers everywhere. DISCLAIMER: NO ACTUAL dogs were harmed during the making of this film–fact!

Nevertheless, don’t let the animation fool you, Anderson’s Dogs is as convoluted a story and themed complexly as any other of his films.

A true underdog story, the film follows a young Japanese boy Atari (Koyu Rankin) and his odyssey to save his beloved guard dog Spots (Liev Schreiber), a short-haired Oceanic speckle eared sport hound, who so happened to be the first dog to be sent to Trash Island, a fictional land outside of Japan’s fictional Megasaki City twenty years in the future, although the story seems more relevant now than it may in twenty years [hopefully]. Trash Island was sanctioned by Atari’s mayoral uncle, Mayor Kobayashi voiced by Anderson collaborator, who also served as one of the screenwriters, Kunichi Nomura. Kobayashi, following an age old dynasty that transgresses from his farthest ancestors, with strong pro-feline beliefs, sets course to sanction a law to deport all dogs to Trash Island, blaming “snout-fever” and “dog-flu” as an incurable disease for its people, despite two scientists (Ken Wantanabe and Yoko Ono) on the verge of a medical breakthrough with the cure.

“What ever happened to man’s best friend?” indeed becomes one of the driving forces of the film. While Atari steals one of his uncle’s jets, the mayor himself Kobayashi, who serves as the boy’s ward following his parents tragic death years before, become family members and foes overnight. Questions arise as to why Atari on a quest to save Spots and deliberately chooses to throw his comfortable life away, despite Spots being one-helluva cute dog? It hurriedly becomes apparent that not only was Spots Atari’s loyal companion, but the pup also served as Atari’s loyal and trusted doggie-gaurd, despite Atari’s hesitations at first. Fast forward some time and Atari’s crash landing onto Trash Island, a desolate, ugly, grungy and garbage-filled wasteland inhabited only by dogs, populated with the brittle bones of animal carcasses, leftover waste, as well as spoiled and half-eaten food of Japan’s Megasaki, the journey becomes a young man’s ode to self-discovery and his ultimate moral fibre. Anderson, who so wonderfully, brings to life fantastical worlds in true Wes Anderson-esque fashion, seemingly chooses this story to showcase a very different side of his of his visual, truly allowing garbage, trash and waste to serve as a beautiful and poetic backdrop to his newest canon of films. Adding signatures such as Anderson’s symmetrical filming style, the use of pans and deep zooms, and Trash Island as well as the overly-populated Megasaki City fit right in with the rest of Anderson’s highly staged universe’s. It also becomes quite easy to see that Anderson is also pioneering himself into cinematic prestige; using Isle of Dogs as his Avatar, progressing and improving stop-motion, maturing the visuals of the medium as well as mastering the ways of its presentation, especially comparing it side-by-side to his first venture with the form in The Fantastic Mr.Fox.