White God (2014)
Directed by Kornél Mundruczó
13 year old Lili fights to protect her dog Hagen, and is devastated when her father sets Hagen free on the streets. Still innocently believing love can conquer any difficulty, Lili sets out to save her dog. Failing in his desperate efforts to find his beloved owner, Hagen joins a canine revolt leading a revolution against their human abusers.
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La insurrección canina invoca de entrada un poema de Rilke (“Cualquier cosa terrible merece nuestro amor”), pero serán de naturaleza muy distinta los referentes narrativos, más bien populares, que rigen sus delirios expresivos: su trayectoria de padecimientos será análoga y correrá irónicamente en paralelo con la del desterritorializado culto ciudadano afrocanadiense de 12 años esclavo (McQueen 13), su visión heroica perruna remitirá de modo inevitable en todo instante al regio sufridor perrazo de pura raza collie Lassie cuyo sacrificial retorno a casa estaría movido por La cadena invisible (Fred M. Wilcox 43), sus peripecias en el regazo infantil sufrirán un revés que lleva del sonrosado Guardián el perro salvador con la inefable Chachita (Gómez Landero 49) a la ferocidad de las complacientes peleas encarnizadas de Amores perros (Iñárritu 00), sus penalidades se desarrollarán entre la serena resignación del asno encarnación de la gracia divina de Al azar Baltasar (Bresson 66) y la im…
Canine lovers may have a deeper appreciation for what it attempts, though only if they can stomach the kind of simulated animal cruelty that made passages of Amores Perros so difficult to sit through.
If you have seen “Amores Perros”, the cynical Mexican film about the connections people have with their pet dogs, you will remember that this is exactly what happens to a gentle Rottweiler owned by a slum dwelling youth.
Through a chain of escape attempts, Hagen is eventually caught by a Turkish restaurant owner who attempts to train him as a fight dog — encouraging his attack instincts with a brutal training regimen that reps the most grueling watch for dog lovers since “Amores perros.”
El director asegura haberse inspirado en la manera en que el novelista J.M Coetzee describe las relaciones humano-animal para narrar la historia de Hagen: y se nota, pues lo que empieza como una cinta de Disney tipoVolviendo a casa, una aventura increíble (Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey) termina siendo un escaparate para la crueldad humana más a tono con, digamos, la primera historia de Amores Perros.
But like George Orwell with Animal Farm before him, Mundruczó takes White God beyond a strict metaphor for the sociopolitical goings-on of a specific time and place, and makes universal statements about the terrible toll of power and the frustrations stemming from the lack thereof.
Mundruczó is mining a rich heritage of underclass table-turning adventures, with liberal dashes of Planet of the Apes and Samuel Fuller’s White Dog.
Think “Planet of the Apes” but with actual dogs rather than CGI apes, and you’re halfway there.
An early scene of Hagen and other wild dogs being rousted by noose-toting animal control officers in a junkyard evokes Kubrick's Roman epic, as well as a "human roundup" scene in the original "Planet of the Apes," which was itself a not-too-subtle parable about slavery and bigotry.
To be sure, that’s not a particularly novel concept—the recent Planet of the Apes reboots have skillfully addressed similar thematic terrain—but what elevates White God beyond the forcefulness of its commentary is the precision of its execution.
A hit at last year’s Cannes, where it rather inexplicably trounced Force Majeure for the top prize in Un Certain Regard, White God at times resembles everything from The Birds to Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes to a live-action Oliver & Company.
It opens like a mad mutt version of Planet of the Apes.
(George Miller did a vastly better job of keeping his meanings and sympathies straight with the human and animal cast of Babe: Pig in the City.)