Isle of Dogs
Isle of Dogs has bite—and not just of the canine kind. The stentorian narration, which persists throughout the film and sets a mock serious tone (concealing serious intentions), announces that Isle is set in “the Japanese archipelago 20 years in the future.” The narrator also relays that the human characters will be heard in their native languages (whether subtitled or not) while the barking of the dogs will be heard in English.
Perhaps this is because the dogs in this stop-motion, multi-animated motion picture are the most developed and human-like characters despite their occasional proclivity to act like, well, dogs. Because of a canine flu epidemic, which threatens to spread to humans, all dogs have been banished to a fetid, rat-infested garbage-strewn island resembling a Third World slum. The flu is real, but even though the cure is at hand, the authoritarian Mayor Kobayashi is anti-science. He arrests kindly Professor Watanabe, who is working on an antidote, and hangs a sign in his lab: Further Research Forbidden.
The dots aren’t hard to connect. Kobayashi is a snarling bully who governs through the popular consent he receives at noisy campaign-style rallies. Lots of places are named for him. Although natural and man-made disasters loom on all sides and toxicity threatens, Kobayashi and his followers seem willing to ignore all that. Yes, dog flu is a problem, but Kobayashi uses the situation to whip up fear, ignoring benign solutions in favor of draconian measures.
The dogs are the creatures put-upon by Kobayashi’s policies and their memories, anxieties and dreams add a note of pathos as well as humor to the proceedings. They all have suffered loss from their banishment. One was the star of a dog chow commercial; another was a prize-winning show dog and another a baseball team mascot. Like reasonable people, they discuss things among themselves. They vote before acting and try to find consensus with the radical on the island, Chief, who angrily declares that he will have no master and mocks them for their lack of courage.
All of this can easily be overlooked in favor of Anderson’s visual conglomeration melding Japanese art forms from many centuries in imagery derived from woodblock prints and ’60s television animation in color and occasional black and white. The human protagonist, Kobayashi’s rebellious space-suited nephew Atari, who defies his uncle by flying to the island to find his dog Spot, is interchangeable with Astro Boy and countless other plucky animated action heroes from the catalogue of Japanese cartoons. The canines are the standouts in Isle of the Dogs.
Anderson had no problem recruiting famous voices for his dogs, including Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Greta Gerwig, Scarlett Johansson and—memorably—gravel-toned Bryan Cranston as Chief.
