Have you ever seen one of those tear-jerking SPCA commercials with the manipulative Sarah McLachlan song bellowing? If you find those brief ads insufferably painful, White God, a new Hungarian film, will be almost impossible to watch.
Dog lovers will be able to relate to the young girl Lili’s heart-wrenching dilemma: allow her father to put the dog, Hagen, down, or release Hagen on the street to fend for himself. Lili’s mother and step-father are leaving the country to go to a conference, leaving the young girl to stay with her cruel father who lives in an apartment complex that charges an extra fee for having dogs stay in the home.
With the hope of eventually tracking Hagen down, Lili decides (under protest) to have the dog released out on the street, where animal conservation officers run wild to track down stray dogs and throw them into the prison-like pound. After being picked up by a member of a dogfighting ring, Hagen, along with the other low-life delinquents, stages a revolution to stand up against their human oppressors: like a Marxist revolution by dogs.
The main dog, Hagen, emerges as a more complex and profound character than any of the humans in the film.
The title of Kornel Mundruczo’s new film that won the Un Certain Regard section at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, is an allusion to Samuel Fuller’s 1982 cult classic White Dog — the story of a black dog trainer who must retrain a white dog that viciously attacks any black person.
Fuller’s film dealt with race relations in America and questioned whether racism could be cured. Mundruczo has taken Fuller’s idea of using a dog as a metaphor for social issues, wrapping his themes within a framework of accessible genre elements.
White God is part sci-fi allegory and coming of age movie, but its power and inspiration comes not from the themes or human characters but the cinematic characterization of the dog.
Hagen’s interactions with the other dogs are not done with voiced-over dialogue like in a Disney movie, but through the juxtaposition of the faces of the animals. It’s an amazing achievement that Mundruzo has stitched together a coherent narrative based on the interactions of animals that cannot speak.
Because of the way they are personified, we understand the animals’ motivations and thought processes. The main dog, Hagen, emerges as a more complex and profound character than any of the humans in the film.
White God crosscuts between Hagen’s struggles living on the streets and Lili’s inability to find her place within the new environment of her father’s apartment. Lili’s story relies on trite clichés and formula, while Hagen’s story immersed me in its originality and poignancy. The film feels uneven as it mixes tired genre conventions and simplistic allegory with inspired storytelling and some of the best animal performances ever filmed.
By the end, White God turns out to be a straightforward political allegory wherein the dogs represent oppressed racial or class groups. Lili’s family’s elitist sensibilities (Lili is enrolled in classical music class and both of her parents are well-off and educated) are contrasted with Hagen’s daily life on the street.
None of it is overly thought-provoking, but the scenes that depict the abuse and interactions of Hagen are what give the film its power. I’m sure that if the SPCA used parts of this film their donation lines would be ringing around the clock: no Sarah McLachlan required.
White God is playing at the Vancity Theatre March 27 to April 5.
