Four years after The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) opened Berlinale, Wes Anderson returns to the film festival with his latest outing, Isle of Dogs . The 68th Berlin International Film Festival opened with the world premiere of Anderson’s stop-motion adventure film, set in a dystopian Japan.
Dressed in a brown jacket, tweed tie and checked green shirt, Anderson addressed a press conference after a screening for the media. He was accompanied by the cast of the film, including Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Greta Gerwig, Liev Schreiber, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum and Kunichi Nomura; and screenwriters Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman. Tilda Swinton, who was present at the conference, chose to be a part of the audience. “I’ve been here since 1985, and have done everything,” she says. “Except being a cleaner. Maybe I’ll do that next year”.
Isle of Dogs finds its genesis in Anderson’s desire to tell a simple story of dogs abandoned in a garbage dump. It later evolved as his homage to Japanese filmmakers Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki, and his admiration for the Japanese culture. Despite not speaking the language himself, the filmmaker chose to make a movie that’s bilingual — English and Japanese. The humans in the film speak Japanese while the dogs communicate in English. The Japanese dialogues aren’t accompanied with subtitles, and it is left to the dogs to interpret them for the audience. In doing so, the film-maker — in typical Anderson quirk — creates a rhythm in the narrative that is both engrossing and thrilling, which keeps you on your toes. “A significant part of the film is spent translating,” chuckles Anderson. “I always knew we were making our own concoction.” The use of language to create humour in Anderson’s film also extends to intertitles. Isle of Dogs is packed with English and Japanese intertitles that are cleverly written, including some very witty haikus.
Anderson’s film is a story of a 12-year-old boy who sets out on a journey to find his dog after the mayor of his town demands all dogs to be sent off to a trash island. The mayor claims that all dogs are incurably infected by a disease and must be quarantined. He uses military might to get this radical decision implemented, and misleads citizens using the media. It is rather inevitable then to think of the film as an allegory of our times. But Anderson insists otherwise. He says the film wasn’t conceptualised to be a mirror to the society. Since the movie was set in a fictional world, it became imperative to invent the politics of the city. Over the two years that the film took to make, Anderson says, the world changed so much that he eventually sought inspiration from reality. “So we think this film is right for the moment,” he shares.
Beyond the narrative, the stop-motion, animated film is told through refreshingly original visuals, layered with Japanese minimalism. It is rather evident that the filmmaker used live models and puppets to achieve the slow motion effect, lending the film an authentic sheen. Anderson informs us that no part of the film is purely computer-generated imagery. “With The Grand Budapest Hotel, and before that with Moonrise Kingdom, I realised I love models. It’s something I associate with cinema history. I liked it when models popped up in Alfred Hitchcock’s films,” he says.
The stop-motion models are brought to life by an exemplary cast, which Anderson informs, was as per his wish list. “Most actors [in the film] are who I’ve worked with before, or loved for years,” he says. “One thing about animated movies is that you can’t say, ‘I’m not available’. You can record it anywhere, you can record it in your house,” he laughs.
The film is set to release later next month in the United States. For now, Isle of Dogs has been enthralling festival goers at Berlinale, and is in competition for the Silver and Golden Bear. Anderson has previously presented three films in the Berlinale Competition: The Royal Tenenbaums (2002), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2005), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize. It remains to be seen if 2018, the year of the dog, will bring Anderson his first Golden Bear.
