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MOVIE REVIEW
Dogtooth
This Kid Isn't All Right,
Nor Are Her Siblings Or Parents
Aggeliki Papoulia as Older Daughter in Yarmos Lanthimos's Oscar-nominated film
"Dogtooth".
Kino International
By
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Friday, February 4, 2011
After watching "Dogtooth" you come away not with skepticism but feeling a
weirdness, discomfort and paralyzing awe from what you've seen. You may
not know why you're shown what you've seen, but you know how you felt when you
saw it. The best thing about "Dogtooth", a Greek-language film directed by
Yarmos Lanthimos, is its effortless neutrality towards what it shows. It
never pretends to appeal to your sensibilities, even as its style gives away its
own point of view about the events it captures.
This tragicomedy of dysfunction and etymological dementia is a near-silent
manifesto of a family of five ensconced in the Greek countryside, isolated from
the world around them. Five stages or levels are conducted by the
patriarch (Christos Stergioglou) of the unnamed family for his kids to
successfully pass (or endure) in some kind of daily coming-of-age home-schooled
ritual. Unlike the cinematic challenges engineered by Jorgen Leth and Lars
Von Trier in "The Five Obstructions", in "Dogtooth" each test is akin to a
fraternity or sorority hazing, and much worse than that. Each task plays
like a comedy sketch spiked with discrete blasts of misanthropy and immoral
conduct.
The film's kids, referred to in production notes as Older Daughter (Aggeliki
Papoulia), Younger Daughter (Mary Tsoni) and Son (good work by Hristos Passalis)
are taught that a cat is a dangerous, terrifying being. They believe the
words "pussy" and "keyboard" mean very different things than what most of the
rest of the planet understands them to mean. Other choice words emanate
from their twisted through-the-looking-glass dictionary. When told to do
what they do there's no blanch or hesitation from the trio of kids.
There's self-awareness only to the point of realizing what the immediate
exploitation of an outcome or circumstance is, but not in the specific action
that any character undertakes. Consequence-free freedom.
"Dogtooth" reopened in San Francisco and other U.S. cities today in the wake of
its Academy Award nomination last week for best foreign language film.
(The film is also currently streaming on Netflix.) Shot with a static
camera Mr. Lanthimos's cinema verite film is unblinking. The film has a
disconnected, unsentimental tone and mood, deliberately shot with a symbolic
dispassion for its subjects: full of odd angles and shots of characters whose
heads are often completely absent from the frame.
As exhibited through its style "Dogtooth" destroys and satirizes notions of
formalism and Norman Rockwell-like order at every turn, alternating between restraint and reckless
abandon to make its points, though on a storytelling level the points made are
mainly subtle if at all. The film's characters seem to unintentionally
mock social norms. Some in this depraved family are more
knowledgeable and manipulative than others. You either embrace them or are
repelled by them. Some audiences however, may be in the middle, which is
where I ambiguously stood (and still do) after spending 90 intense minutes with
these creatures.
Mary Tsoni as Younger Daughter in "Dogtooth".
Kino International
Do the characters of "Dogtooth" really know and understand what they are doing?
Do they truly know the difference between right and wrong? Does it matter
whether they do or not? Our judgments about them are informed by what we
see, and rightly so. For sure, "Dogtooth" isn't an easy film to sit
through. There are bouts of shocking, spontaneous imagery that will
disturb. Hardly entertaining or even riveting, "Dogtooth" finds ways to be
uncomfortably funny, but the laughter, if out loud, will arise from its
volatility and discomfiting environment, one where you never know what will happen next.
Unlike Todd Solondz's "Happiness", Tim Roth's "The War Zone", Thomas
Vinterberg's "The Celebration (Festen)" and Noah Baumbach's "The Squid And The
Whale" -- films all involving various iterations of the subject matter this film
covers -- "Dogtooth" has no filter. There isn't a character in it who
moralizes or represents the audience's assumed view point. The audience is
therefore left to be an advocate for itself, and ultimately has to decide
whether to walk out of the theater in disgust or stay and "support" these fiercely
anti-social troops.
By the way, I don't see any appreciable difference between "Dogtooth" and last
year's "The Human Centipede (First Sequence)".
Both flaunt art house production values. The former film is often
horrific. The latter is pure horror. In "Centipede" Dieter Laser's
malevolent doctor character carries his orgiastic,
Frankenstein-styled depravity to unfathomable levels. But what could be more of a
horror than what this family in Greece does?
If nothing else "Dogtooth" shows that human behavior, no matter how aberrant
and alienating, is always done for a reason. We don't have to understand
the reason. (The film never provides one, nor is it obligated to do so.
And this will trouble some audiences.) To justify or understand the reason why isn't an endorsement
of the conduct we see. To ask why may be an honest attempt to try to grasp
or reconcile what we've seen with our visceral and immediate reaction to it. I do not endorse
or condone the actions in "Dogtooth". Nor do I understand them. Still, I had a strange,
abiding compassion for these characters.
Under the veneer of Mr. Lanthimos's film is a deep sadness and despair
accentuated by his characters' apparent lack of introspection. They
all clearly have the capacity to think and react as most humans do, but the
innocent-like (though adulterated) behavior of these children -- raised by a father whose own morality
was purchased at Christie's auction house for a low, low price -- is telling.
Some of the family members, even in their repellent actions have a great sense
of love, or are achingly searching for it. Above all, this family shoots from the hip without deliberation.
And we keep watching with guilty fascination.
With: Michelle Valley, Anna Kalaitzidou.
"Dogtooth" is not rated by the Motion Picture Association Of America.
The film contains disturbing bloody images, graphic violence and animal cruelty,
aberrant sexual behavior and startling sequences. The film is in the Greek
language with English subtitles. The film's running time is one hour and
33 minutes.
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