Note: This article contains serious spoilers
"Dog God" can be regarded as a strange heroic story in this year when all kinds of superhero stories have been collectively muted. It tells the story of a young man who has experienced horrific childhood trauma, a disabled drag queen who also rules a ferocious team of obedient puppies, and is an unusual superhero with a hard line between good and evil.
"Dog God" poster
Luc Besson used an era frame in the 1990s to place this story. The flashback began. The arrested male protagonist Douglas was interviewed by a criminal psychiatrist in prison and told his long and tragic life story: the tragedy of his family, his father. The violence, the departure of his mother, the social isolation brought about by his disability and orphan status...the only thing that gave him warmth was the dog.
Therefore, as a social outcast, Douglass voluntarily deviated from mainstream society, exiled himself with the dogs, and built a city-state that belonged only to him and the dogs on the ruins of the building. He even had a fairy-tale-like character for his dogs. The Pied Piper's control power can train them to sneak into rich people's mansions and steal, and they can also use thunder to threaten the black boss and let the poor people go.
"Dog God" stills
The setting itself, to be honest, is tacky and childish. Douglas’s various difficulties in his tragic life were not explored and thought about more deeply in the movie. Domestic violence made him mentally and physically disabled. The young actress used Shakespeare's works allowed him to get out of childhood abuse and find some kind of fulcrum in life. Everything seemed to lack complexity, as if every choice and step a person made could be traced back to one reason.
Moreover, in "Dog God", the images of dogs, drag queens, psychologists, disabled people, Shakespearean actors, etc., and even the label of the protagonist as a dog lover, are all created with rather simple and crude stereotypes, serving the purpose of the drama. Moving forward, apart from the protagonist, there is almost no memorable and deep character. Moreover, the emotions between Douglas and his canine companions lack room for depiction, so audiences who go to the cinema to see Cute Pets Cure will basically be disappointed.
But as a commercial film, it has successfully attracted the audience into the cinema and satisfied the need for mental stimulation in each spectacle scene with visual impact. Among them, how to cleverly use the breeds and sizes of dogs to complete some dramatic tasks can still bring quite a lot of interesting drama scenes. "Dog God" takes a simple idea and pushes it to its extreme cinematically without overstuffing it.
"Dog God" stills
Particularly worth mentioning is the climax of the film, a scene in which Douglas and the dogs fight gangsters, which is quite similar to the vicious dog version of "Home Alone". The dogs fight with gangsters in the dark and use traps. and body size differences to trap these intruders. For viewers who like violent scenes, this is a quite innovative action display. But for dog lovers, watching dogs kill people may not bring much psychological pleasure, although the dogs in the film still appear to be nimble, elegant and cute when killing people.
And you have to say that in shaping the protagonist of this film, it relies more on the actors themselves to support the charm of the protagonist. Caleb Landry Jones, the actor who plays Douglas, perfectly portrays an extremely difficult character, making it difficult to take your eyes away from him while watching the movie. When he performed lip sync (lip sync) to French Edith Piaf's famous song "La Foule" in "The Dog God", the character's androgynous, sad and crazy atmosphere was particularly charming under the spotlight. Therefore, many overseas audiences and media compared his performance with that of Joaquin Phoenix in "Joker".
"Dog God" stills
The character Douglas chose to associate with dogs when he could not get care and respect in society. He is both a victim and an avenger. The person who directly harmed him has withered away. Therefore, the targets of his revenge seem to be those who control power and money in society. But in fact, at the end of the film, Luc Besson shows Like all tragic heroes since Greek mythology, Douglass’s ultimate revenge target is fate, the god who bestowed this fate, and this effort is destined to fail. He has no other choice but to torture the sky with his life. .
The scene in which Douglas finally rises from his wheelchair, walks to the shadow of the cross and shouts "I'm here for you" before finally collapsing under the cross is certainly moving. The film attempts to depict his deep, Passion-like pain with sincerity and even harsh symbolism. But once you think about it carefully, you will feel that the emotional exaggeration is enough, and there is not enough foreshadowing and stacking in the logic of the drama.
"Dog God" stills
When we talk about fate, what confuses and confuses all mankind the most is the unpredictable and unreasonable nature of fate. Therefore, we need God and an omniscient and omnipotent controller to make us believe that probability itself is also a macroscopic meaning. It is only through the orderly control of the world that we are too small to understand that we can gain comfort and security.
Therefore, when "Dog God" tries to push Douglas to question God at the cost of his life "Why is my life so miserable?", if there were more unpredictable and unreasonable displays of fate, more protagonists would be able to It can be more effective when you are close to success or when you achieve some kind of happiness but fail for no reason. Instead of like now, Douglas's tragedy can almost be attributed simply to two external reasons: the cruel father and brother in his native family, and society's indifference and differential treatment of people with disabilities. The film uses dramatic logic to create an easily attributable presentation of the character's tragedy, resulting in a greatly weakened shock when the protagonist points his finger at the God in the void at the end.
"Dog God" stills
Luc Besson's directorial career reached its peak in the 1990s with "The Killer" and "The Fifth Element". He is one of the French directors who is best at Hollywood-style commercial narratives and has excellent visual skills. imagination, and has always made up for its shortcomings in story depth. This time, "Dog God" can feel its efforts in character creation, but it is still a bit surprising that this film was shortlisted for the Venice Golden Lion Award. If this work is viewed as a serious portrait film, it has many shortcomings. However, if it is only viewed as a commercial film, Luc Besson makes people feel like "your uncle is still your uncle". His familiarity and ability to control commercial genre films, It really makes people sigh: It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a commercial movie with such a high degree of completion in domestic theaters. From this perspective, "Dog God" is still worth going to the cinema.
