Isle of Dogs(2018)
Visual creativity at its best!
You can’t look at a Futura font and not think about Wes Anderson. Such is the impeccable style of filmmaking and art direction he brings into his movies. His trademark style consists of building extensive artsy sets, slow motion shots, a very distinctive camera positioning and of course, the chapter-like storytelling. His influential style is so aesthetically pleasing, there is a subreddit on it. It would be a whole another essay talk about him in detail, but for this one I would like to stick to latest and probably the trickiest project — Isle Of Dogs. The premise of the movie itself is so peculiar — sick dogs abandoned on a dystopian Japanese garbage island — it immediately draws your attention. The stop-motion animation just adds a cherry on top of the cake.
The movie was written in original and directed by Wes Anderson. It has star-studded voiceovers from the likes of Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton and Jeff Goldblum. We begin with the prologue where the cat-loving Kobayashi dynasty had once waged war on dogs, nearly wiping out the entire population, before a boy samurai killed the head of the clan. But the ancient grudge has persisted; the mayor who orders the exile of the dogs is named Kobayashi. He deports all dogs in Megasaki — many of them down with snout fever — to the trash heap of an island off the coast. One of those dogs is Spots — the pet of his young ward, Atari. Six months later, Atari hijacks a plane and flies it to Trash Island to search for Spots. After crash-landing, Atari befriends a pack of dogs and they pack decides to help Atari locate Spots. Together, they fend off a rescue team accompanied by a band of robot dogs that Kobayashi sent to retrieve Atari.
On first impressions, Isle of Dogs would look like a story about disenfranchisement — a marginal section of the society being pushed out. On the other hand, it could simply be a tale of a boy and his dog, with tribute to the overtones of Hachiko. There are some other interpretations which I came across as well. Some point out that while all barks are translated into English, the human language, much of it Japanese, is largely unsubtitled. “You don’t understand the words,” Anderson says , “but you understand the emotion.” To me it seems like rather than foregrounding canine conversation, this technique casts the Japanese characters in particular — rather than humans in general — as “others”. Even though the plot might not be something unique or mind blowing, the execution is what makes the end product look good. The focus of the characters and their relationships with one another casts a strong influence on the viewer and makes them stick to their seats.
Coming to the part I actually want to talk about — the animation. The movie is no exception to Wes Anderson’s incorporation of symmetry and compositions on the screen. Unlike his other movies, what makes the animation different here is how it puts emphasis onto the subtlety instead of making this feel grand. The animators had to build grand sets to make the city and used a lot of creativity on the Trash Island set, but in the end they were all just gigantic open spaces only for Wes Anderson to put his characters in the centre and zoom in on them, basically asking the audience to not bother about what is going on in the background. Of course, the most striking part is that the entire movie is made from stop-motion. Not only the sets, but also all the effects are entirely handmade, a refreshing experience from the otherwise CGI laden mainstream movies. As for the characters, they are meant to represent the Japanese culture and art, put in an environment where colours take more prominence than the actual details in terms of their movements. This is where I feel the animators outdid themselves. The dogs highlight their work, showing how well they studied the movement of dogs and also put in extra effort to make that lip-sync look super smooth. I will attach all the behind the scenes footage that I must recommend you to watch, for I don’t think I could explain it in a better way that the makers themselves do.
At times , it feels there are too many characters which could not be covered in detail in the 100 minute run time of the movie. But it is sort of compensated by giving every character a different and unique relatability with the viewer.
The movie wants you to pay attention to details so much so that, the stop motion is as important to its success as the story and the characters. While it does one-up the animation style from Wes’ previous Fantastic Mr. Fox, I still feel Roald Dahl’s classic was a more wholesome viewing experience compared to this one. But mark my words, this movie will go down in history as a benchmark effort in the area of stop motion animation even though it did not get the recognition it deserved( looking at you, Oscars)
