Review of Isle of Dogs (2018) by Viet Phuong N — 20 Jun 2018

Despite its being an animation, this delightful film still bears all the trademarks of Wes Anderson from character arc (or lack thereof), plot structure, cinematography style, color palette, and so on.

Normally Wes Anderson's films are always full of heart and quirkiness, and his greatest works would occur when he could achieve a perfect balance between his warmhearted approach to the subject matters (even the darkest ones, some of which are heavily implied in this film) and his tendency to mark the subtlety of his film with bizarre characters, sentimental stories, and sometimes hilarious plot devices.

This film leans a little bit to the quirky side, partly due to the somewhat limitation of the stop-motion format of this film in depicting human emotions, and also due Wes Anderson's over-reliance on playing with words and languages.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this film thoroughly for its amusing characters and chaotically optimistic plot, but more importantly, I admire Wes Anderson for his smart and surprisingly humanistic sarcasm while dealing with such poignant and relevant themes like racism, discrimination, public manipulation, propaganda, and desensitization of animal cruelty.

A serious and frank depiction of tragedies is important, but a lighthearted caricature of the truth that can both entertain and evoke emotions from the audience is even more difficult, and sometimes more useful.