Review of Isle of Dogs (2018) by Pipec — 13 Jun 2018

This canine-themed stop-motion beast wags its tail because of Anderson's filmmaking loftiness. Wes Anderson is not a cult artist, he's a prolific maestro. His films always enjoy an added cachet that positions them far above many only-entertainment flicks, and his latest classical animated jewel meets perfectly what one would expect from an indie author who has erected his sublime filmography frame by frame.

It's neither a blatant cultural appropriation of East Asian culture nor a scurrilous Japanese stereotyped assortment drawn by an injurious foreigner, it's a beautifully hand-made and delicate love story, a widely different, a fertile pic in visible and veiled exclamations on freedom, press, politics, principles, fear, transformation, friendship and human and dog's life which feeds off from a top-of-the-range vocal cast and a visual and technical section as eccentric and neat as every of the narrative ambitions of a filmmaker who not only sets up a baroque addition to his exquisite filmography and artistic growth but imbues this high-concept film, with some complacency, of a razor-sharp, sophisticated allegory that is clearly geared to the grown-up minds, those who resist to consider art as a channel of trivial thoughts, not as a mechanism of inescapable contact and advancement.

There's no doubt that for Anderson's style newcomers the first thing they will highlight is tangibility of the pictures. When the screening was over, the up-front reference that arose in my mind was the most recent piece of art of Laika Entertainment, "Kubo and the Two Strings," not precisely by the concordance with the cultural basis or some moral similarities, but by the beautifully crafted creations, by being an invaluable gift for cinema, by the unspeakable visual prowess that hundreds of artists have built for us.

The symmetrical compositions of the ever-perfectionist director who refuses to subdue his works under the phenomena of the digital age are straightforwardly glittering; a sharper aim to circumvent known superficialities and immerse it into the complicated, visually speaking, Japanese pulp places this film on a higher level in artistic terms, even unfolding the majority of the action on an adjacent island.

More broadly, what decorates with personality the feast of strangely gorgeous frames is incredible and awardable cinematographer Tristan Oliver, rich in nuances and recesses endowing the pictures with irrepressible force which grows uncontrollably as the film runs, every frame is an authentic, finely crafted and shaped sculpture passing through the hands of hundreds of exquisite animators who with their talent, literally and figuratively, capture the obsessions of an animation maestro; a spellbinding experience.

Anderson isn't only known for his peculiar and unpractical but extremely gratifying filming method, the textual motives that mobilize such handmade constructions intervene in the success of the narrations.

The script is written undeniable by the American director because the characteristics of a concise writer arise, sensitive in a given moment, but coolly manipulative when the film itself requires it. With regard to the dicey, well-intentioned plot, it's conceived by eight hands with own name and recognition: Kunichi Nomura, in his first work as a writer; Jason Schwartzman, in his third experience as a film screenwriter; Roman Coppola, in one of the greatest successes of his career; and Wes Anderson, a man who doesn't need a description, just run and get covered with his artistic visions.

The perspective he gives the story is simply unique, social and pleasantly revitalizing not only due to the fussy field of animation but the drama genre lines it uses with an unusual confidence in levels of conviction and coherence with respect to a plot that doesn't set in an explicitly human context, in the strictest sense of the word.

"Isle of Dogs" by Wes Anderson mesmerizes from beginning to end, partly by its mania of playing with the high expectations always put on a director's job. Accessible and sophisticated, strategic and human, hilarious and dramatic, strangely beautiful and directed; this animated film is an undeniable love letter from the filmmaker to Oriental culture, canines and, beyond doubt, the recesses and perversities of the feelings, actions and inspirations of humankind; A feature film that produces juicy critical, controversial commentaries through generally opposed elements that are quickly woven on a story led by any manifestation of love, prioritizing narrative, technical and artistic fields with the proportionality only a maestro could handle.

If you want to enjoy a good movie you will have many more options to choose from, but if you demand a top-notch film you will be welcome to watch as a stop-motion animation monster puts an actor, screenwriter, producer and director— uninterested in making movies for an Oscar — on the front page, a place he has never gotten out from.