Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
From the opening shots of this film I knew this was going to be a difficult watch. I love dogs, and have two of my own; watching people treat them despicably and seeing them injured is hard. Dogs and their owners are vital to understanding Inarritu's film. How people treat their dogs reveals more about their characters than their relationships with each other.
Hand-held camera doesn't always work for me, but in this film it did; it heighten the visceral aspects of the film, particularly at the beginning with the car chase. In the second section the camera became still and more distant from its subjects; the third had elements of candid-camera to it.
The film is decidedly non-linear, and at times I was slightly lost as to where we were in the story's chronology. The three different stories within the film are connected by a horrific event which affects many people's lives. The complexity of the inter-woven plots means that I will need to re-watch this at a later date. Did I like it? Mmm, I admired Inarritu's filmmaking but was rather confronted by the animal's experiences in the film. As a result, the characters are hard to like.
Agreed completely. This a film that is easy to admire but difficult to like in any real way.
ReplyDelete(I have a dog, too. I had the same issues.)