The Japanese had company. Hayao Miyazaki was not the only iconoclast of cel. Martin Rosen, a relatively unsung British filmmaker, just like the Ghibli founder, rehabilitated the perception of animated films as being solely a child's preoccupation, following up "Watership Down", adapted from the Richard Adams young adult novel with "The Plague Dogs", whose lab animal storyline provided Wes Anderson with a template for "Isle of Dogs". Actually, Anderson utilizes both films: From "Watership Down", the one about rabbits, he replicates its storytelling device, the prologue, in which a narrator tells the story of The Great Frith, a JC figure who is at the center of the hare's religion. El-ahrirah is Adam. It's their creation myth. The animation style(best described as moving children book illustrations) differs from the impressionistic watercolor look that follows. The rabbit creation myth gives the burrowing mammals an interior life. In "Isle of Dogs", the prologue is named as such, titled "The Boy and the Headless Ancestor", it recounts a history of cats and dogs, a history that has more in common with folklore than scripture, told through Japanese woodblock paintings. The ancient art form, indigenous to Japan, gives way to stop motion animation, indigenous to 19th century America. Although there is no transfigured creation myth in "Isle of Dogs", the filmmaker reinvents the human form of the carpenter into a warrior who challenged the hegemony that cats held over dogs by slaying Mayor Kenji's forefather, founder of the cat worship-based religion. The renegade Kobayashi defector was immortalized as The Boy Samurai of Legend. Cats and dogs don't need to look toward the stars. They have masters. It's people who need a higher love. And in this alternate universe, instead of a text, a consecrated book that connects mankind to the spiritual world, the dog is the text, or cat, depending on what the pet advocate believes. Such are the properties of the canonical in this domesticated animal-centric world that Anderson lays out. Petting a dog brings you closer to God. Petting a cat brings you closer to God, too.
The lay of the land, home of the brave, Anderson replicates then displaces, our current political climate, moving the partisan fighting to an island nation. Two factions exists, pro-dog and anti-dog, and both sides, not just the latter, take on the personification of a social activist group, more so than a religion. The two sides, brainwashed by state propaganda, don't seem to understand that their mutual enemy is Mayor Kenji, the current dictator of the cat-loving Kobayashi dynasty. Before the wood blocks, there is a diorama, and the objects within this diorama convey more than a passing resemblance to eastern faith. The formally dressed man, a high priest of sorts, moves ritual-like precision inside the tableau adorned with cats; he hits a gong, lights candles, bows, and claps his hands together twice in reverence of the sacred feline. The cat worship is government-sanctioned, the dominant religion whose leaders of an apocryphal Japan devised a campaign against dogs by expropriating the chemical industry to cleanse the country of man's best friend. At a town hall meeting, Professor Watanabe, the Science Party candidate, introduces a cure in the works for snout fever, a dog serum that would stave off the planned deportation of dogs from Megasaki City to an adjunct island. But the people reject science; the people turn into an angry mob; the anti-dog demonstrators, once former dog lovers are now cat lovers, a conversion to the fictionalized native eastern religion propagated by propaganda. They throw things at Watanabe, setting his female assistant into action. Yoko Ono stares down the anti-Science crowd as she moves the professor away from the lectern. Yes, that Yoko Ono.
In his lifetime, John Lennon wanted Ono to get credit for co-writing "Imagine", a song that takes gentle aim at belief systems as the intervening hitch whenever peace talks are attempted and inevitably fail. In 2017, Lennon, posthumously, finally got his wish when the National Music Publishers Association(NMPA) added Ono's name alongside her late husband as the co-author of "Imagine". The temptation is there to posit Watanabe as a stand-in for Lennon, since in "God", a track off the ex-Beatles first solo album "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band", he renounces his past association with the Maharishi. The professor dies, but there is ambiguity in the cause of his death. Under house arrest, Watanabe eats a boxed lunch comprised of sushi, then stops to inspect the final piece, suspecting poison. He tastes the laced wasabi, but the filmmaker cuts away before we learn if that tentative lick was enough to kill him. Did the professor ingest the whole of the wasabi? Does he want his assistant to get full credit for the dog serum? The cure for snout fever is finished after his passing. At the sake bar, Tracy Walker, a student activist, confronts Ono about the dog serum. The bartender slides down a bottle of blue liquid. Look at how close Ono moves her face up to the glass. Like in real life, she remained silent about the truth.
It's hers.
The lay of the land, home of the brave, Anderson replicates then displaces, our current political climate, moving the partisan fighting to an island nation. Two factions exists, pro-dog and anti-dog, and both sides, not just the latter, take on the personification of a social activist group, more so than a religion. The two sides, brainwashed by state propaganda, don't seem to understand that their mutual enemy is Mayor Kenji, the current dictator of the cat-loving Kobayashi dynasty. Before the wood blocks, there is a diorama, and the objects within this diorama convey more than a passing resemblance to eastern faith. The formally dressed man, a high priest of sorts, moves ritual-like precision inside the tableau adorned with cats; he hits a gong, lights candles, bows, and claps his hands together twice in reverence of the sacred feline. The cat worship is government-sanctioned, the dominant religion whose leaders of an apocryphal Japan devised a campaign against dogs by expropriating the chemical industry to cleanse the country of man's best friend. At a town hall meeting, Professor Watanabe, the Science Party candidate, introduces a cure in the works for snout fever, a dog serum that would stave off the planned deportation of dogs from Megasaki City to an adjunct island. But the people reject science; the people turn into an angry mob; the anti-dog demonstrators, once former dog lovers are now cat lovers, a conversion to the fictionalized native eastern religion propagated by propaganda. They throw things at Watanabe, setting his female assistant into action. Yoko Ono stares down the anti-Science crowd as she moves the professor away from the lectern. Yes, that Yoko Ono.
In his lifetime, John Lennon wanted Ono to get credit for co-writing "Imagine", a song that takes gentle aim at belief systems as the intervening hitch whenever peace talks are attempted and inevitably fail. In 2017, Lennon, posthumously, finally got his wish when the National Music Publishers Association(NMPA) added Ono's name alongside her late husband as the co-author of "Imagine". The temptation is there to posit Watanabe as a stand-in for Lennon, since in "God", a track off the ex-Beatles first solo album "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band", he renounces his past association with the Maharishi. The professor dies, but there is ambiguity in the cause of his death. Under house arrest, Watanabe eats a boxed lunch comprised of sushi, then stops to inspect the final piece, suspecting poison. He tastes the laced wasabi, but the filmmaker cuts away before we learn if that tentative lick was enough to kill him. Did the professor ingest the whole of the wasabi? Does he want his assistant to get full credit for the dog serum? The cure for snout fever is finished after his passing. At the sake bar, Tracy Walker, a student activist, confronts Ono about the dog serum. The bartender slides down a bottle of blue liquid. Look at how close Ono moves her face up to the glass. Like in real life, she remained silent about the truth.
It's hers.