The Pitch: When someone tries to build a perfect
family, that is doomed to fail.
Oh my god, can someone just explain this film for me? I'm having a hell of a time writing about this movie. Each time I've tried to start this post by being apologetic and explaining how I fail sometimes as a movie viewer, because I look at things too literally. I mention how I have trouble with the dream state of David Lynch or the mannerisms of a Wes Anderson movie. I then connect that back to Yorgos Lanthimos, who after The Lobster and now Dogtooth, I've determined that I don't get the appeal. I'm not convinced this is all on me though. I'm a strong believer that every movie needs to be grounded to a logic. Most films aim for real-world logic. Those are easy enough to test. What gets trickier is when the logic is bound elsewhere. Even Lynch is bound to something. It's just hard to define it. For Dogtooth, the more specific question I find myself asking is if the logic being applied to the world and to the characters is the same. My initial thought is "no".
I decided to give Dogtooth a try for three reasons. 1) There was a kernel of something that I liked about The Lobster. 2) Lanthimos' upcoming film*, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, looks good. 3) The guys on Filmspotting, which I picked up a few months ago, won't shut up about how great 2009's Dogtooth is. I think there's a lot of skill on display. Lanthimos couldn't leave a bigger fingerprint on this if he tried, with all the oddly cropped camera shots and meticulously chosen dialogue. Like a Wes Anderson movie, I don't doubt for a second that he is in full control of every second of the movie. I'm just not sure I bought into what it was doing. There's a little too much left unexplained, and most of it comes down to "why now?" Why after decades of raising these kids are things only falling apart now? Is the introduction of the employee the father brings in to sleep with the son being seen as the catalyst? Why would he even bring her in in the first place? Especially since the parents seem fine with a little incest by the end. The oldest daughter seems pretty curious about the rest of the world. Why is she only taking the initiative to escape now? Simply put, I don't believe these characters could've existed in the film before it begins. It's asking a little too much for me to believe these characters existed for that long in that way.
I spent a lot of time watching this movie thinking back to the documentary TheWolf Pack, which tells an inverted version of this story. Those real siblings were fully aware of the real world. They just accepted that they didn't need to go into it. The "children" in Dogtooth are a step beyond plausibility, especially given that outside of the walls of that house and yard, the world is presented as being pretty close to what it really is. I could buy into The Lobster because the whole world was in on the idea. It's harder in Dogtooth, because it's all bound to the house.
*It was upcoming at the time. I'm working through a backlog of these reactions.
I don't know whether to call this a strength or weakness, but I never could tell if this was a dark comedy or just dark. It's a bit absurd, which leads me to think some things are meant to be funny, at least in hindsight, but I spent most of the time mortified. The son killing the cat was just messed up, as was the daughter beating her own face in.
How did the parent's keep the lie about the second brother going for so long. How is the father able to get away with beating an employee with a VCR? Why is he even bothering to introduce an outsider to all this in the first place?
I am clearly missing the forest for the trees with this film. I'm letting the larger point be obscured by smaller questions which might not even be bound to the reality of the film. I'm looking for anyone to explain what's so great about this forest that I shouldn't be picking at individual trees though.
Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend
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