Author/MANOHLA DARGIS
Translation/Boundary
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Article source: Review: Wes Anderson's Bleakly Beautiful 'Isle of Dogs'
Wes Anderson is like a micrographer who likes to play to the extreme, creating a world of delicate window displays that resembles our reality while maintaining a distinct Anderson style. All the elements together make up Wes Anderson's world of images, in which the real world seems to be filtered out through a sieve and then carefully placed in a glass case for display in white gloves. The result is sometimes surprising, sometimes exhausting, sometimes both, as in his latest animated film, Isle Of Dogs. "What happened to man's best friend?" in this animated film set in a fantasy Japan, the cat-loving villains conspire to wipe out canines.
It's a serious, heavy question in this film, sometimes comical, sometimes melancholy, which seems more convincing than straight-forward love. As he did in The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson tells stories through stop-motion animation, a handcrafted process in which objects like puppets create the illusion of frame-by-frame movement. The story takes place in Nagasaki, Japan. The ferocious Mayor Kobayashi (voiced by Nomura Nomura) banishes all the dogs to a garbage dump on an island, including Mayor Kobayashi's 12-year-old adopted son Kobayashi (voiced by Yulan Jin) His pet dog Dian Dian (voiced by Liev Schreiber) was also exiled.
The story of "Canis Island" takes place in the process of Xiaolin's search for a little Spots. This heroic quest leads him to a canine exile, a wasteland where some mysterious sick dogs are fighting. Food collected from rancid, bug-ridden garbage. It's a horrific movie -- and an apt and brutal metaphor for our off-screen real world -- with an abandoned nuclear power plant and an abandoned amusement park. It’s Wes Anderson’s work, and it’s also visually pleasing, filled with perfectly arranged lumps of trash, pools of toxic liquid and walls full of stained glass bottles gleaming like morning Stained glass windows flooded with sunlight.
Junk Island is ugly, but its horrors are tempered by their careful construction and visual splendor, and are quickly contained. The bark of each breed is presented in English. There are purebreds and mongrels, and a silky long-haired dog named Nutmeg, voiced, naturally, by Scarlett Johansson in that husky, nonchalant voice. However, the largest group of dog leaders here is composed of five abandoned dogs, they are "Rex" Rex (voiced by Edward Norton), "Boss" Boss (voiced by Bill Murray), "Duke" Duke (voiced by Edward Norton) Jeff Goldblum), "The King" King (Bob Balaban), and an arrogant and violent wild dog "Chief" Chief (Bryan Cranston) are a wise bunch The dog that never believed in the unreliable kindness of humans.
These dogs express a wealth of emotion in this film. They are surprising, touching, and utterly delightful companions, with witty voices, quirky expressions, and too many heartbreaking marks of abuse - ragged fur, splitting wounds, beatings with pain Knotted legs, and that anxious, sad devotion they retain to even the least deserving. (The head of the puppet production department is Andy Gent, who also worked as animator on "The Fantastic Mr. Fox"). The dogs have been abandoned by their owners, and sadly, only Kobayashi knows about their past. They long for someone to give them a gentle pat on the head.
The stories of animal cruelty on this trash island are reminiscent of stories of pain and suffering, such as The Black Horse and Firewood. Anderson, who also wrote the film, has an unconvincing approach to the subject, his genocide thematic discussion is just about to stop, just rushing to slip away and get back to his embroidered beauty . Isle of Dogs is filled with beautiful illustrations, quirky decorations and retro details—old-fashioned labels, punched-card-controlled computers—that enhance the look of the island's fantasy world. But a lot of the time, the film feels over-the-top, even a sense of flooding. It's reminiscent of the horrors of Japan's past when the explosion sent the trash island into darkness. Anderson felt like he was detouring on the depths of a subject he didn't know how to deal with himself.
Like many of Anderson's other films, Isle of Dogs is story-driven, which means it's as much about the present as it is about the present or the future. Narrated by Courtney B. Vance, it opens with an allegory of a young samurai, Kobayashi's role model and one of Anderson's wise young characters. In the film, Kobayashi takes up most of the scenes, but it is a pity that many of his words have not been translated into English. In addition to some interesting key information in the film due to the news interpreter in English (voiced by Francis McDormand), most of the Japanese in the film is not translated. Presumably Anderson clearly did not want the subtitles to interfere with the visual effect of the picture he wanted to present. So when Japanese characters speak, their words are often reduced to simple decorative words, at least for non-Japanese speakers.
It's an odd, confusing choice, especially since it means that very few Japanese characters (including Kobayashi) are given dignity by canines. Back on the Nagasaki side, when the mayor conspired with scientists to develop a cure for the canine contagion, this part only conveyed part of the message. Meanwhile, high school reporters, led by foreign exchange student Tracy Tracy (voiced by Grreta Gerwig), investigate the mayor. Tracy speaks Japanese, but most of the complaints are in English. Wearing a golden explosive head, she is domineering and domineering like Tracy Frick in "The Election", and like the young struggler in "Youth and Youth" directed by Anderson himself.
Mr. Anderson has always borrowed from classic films, often interspersing his work with some of his favorite moments. In "Isle of Dogs", he paid tribute to director Suzuki Kiyomi. The mayor is a playful (and convincing) impersonation of actor Toshio Mifune, best known for his work with Akira Kurosawa. Anderson also mentioned the influence of Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki's work on "Isle Of Dogs." The episodes are loving, but at times ritualistic, distracting, and hard to pull in; most of the time, Anderson is replaying his best work, returning to his well-known creativity (including the degenerate adult world), the creations would have been better if they weren’t limited to self-awareness and flashy minutiae pictorial decorations.
However, Mr. Anderson pulls you into the world of "Canis Island" time and time again.
His use of film space is one of the characteristics of his director's style. He playfully likes to turn the spatial structure into a plane and overlook the depth; he likes symmetry, and unlike most directors today, he is in a fixed A lot was done within the frame of the shooting space. His designs in this film are particularly creative, and I can seem to see real dogs hanging out outside, breathing the air. Even though their relationship is expressed through narration and nonstop growling, it's especially tearful when they are separated in the film and united at the end. (By protecting others, you are also saving yourself.) Here, as a dog looks at the camera, the wind blows gently over it like a human hand. Maybe this is the soul of this movie.
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