'Isle of Dogs' - Review

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Wes Anderson’s latest is a colourful canine adventure that moves with the vigour of a wagging tail but bristles with fleas both literal and political. In this stop-motion expedition, Koyu Rankin voices Atari, the young ward of Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura), dictator of the future Japanese archipelago. Kobayashi has exiled the city’s dog population to nearby Trash Island, due to an outbreak of canine fever, but Atari sets off to rescue his dog, Spots (Liev Schreiber). On an odyssey through the land of muck and mongrels, he is accompanied by a small pack of lost dogs (Ed Norton, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum). They’re led by the moody stray, Chief (Bryan Cranston). Meanwhile, an underground student resistance is working within the city to bring down Kobayashi and expose his decree as a sham.

I have to admit here that my Wes Anderson exposure is nominal: I found The Grand Budapest Hotel endearing, but felt that Fantastic Mr. Fox was an exhausting and massively irksome misunderstanding of the source material. Isle of Dogs falls somewhere in the middle: it’s visually impeccable in that classic Anderson manner (more striking here than perhaps ever before, in sharp juxtaposition with the grim environments), but the red-wine-and-bolognese witticisms and surprisingly bloody violence means that the stuff of children’s storybooks is once again rendered inaccessible to their readers.

Shot by Tristan Oliver, - a veteran of both Anderson’s previous foray into stop-motion and the works of Aardman - the images are impossibly fluid. Wallace and Gromit seems to have been a particular influence in the production design, too: it’s impossible to see a stop-motion dog silently roll their eyes with exasperation and think of anything else, and the robo-hounds deployed by Mayor Kobayashi smack more than a little of Preston from A Close Shave. Besides the stop-motion, there’s occasional use of 2D cartoons for computer displays and CCTV monitors, which liven the frame during the grimy grey finale at the farthest point of trash island. Our cohorts on this journey are the usual crowd (save Bryan Cranston, the entire pack have worked with Anderson on  multiple occasions), and are reliably charming. The problem was never going to be their individual voice performances (as if Jeff Goldblum as a gossip-loving mutt could ever be anything other than a joy), but the very fact they’re speaking American English. 

This wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that there are no subtitles for the Japanese characters, who can only be understood through a translator for the Mayor’s speeches (Frances McDormand) or through the interpretation of American foreign exchange student, Tracy (Greta Gerwig). Having the Japanese legends narrated by white actors only enforces this feeling of cultural tourism. As if to double down, a rant by Atari is faded to background noise as Goldblum despairs “I wish somebody spoke his language!” The dogs are meant to be our central, relatable characters in the story (which would be perfectly fine) but the only humans presented as scary or ‘other’ are the Japanese. 

Don’t get me wrong: I found a lot to enjoy in Isle of Dogs, and many others will fall for its particular brand of scruffy liveliness. With a cast and crew this likeable and skilled, it’s very hard not to exclaim sheer admiration of its craft. But when you develop a story that is so steeped in the trappings of another culture, only to deny that culture a real voice except through a white saviour character and foreign tools, loving animation and cute performances are little compensation.