Many auteur directors create films that seem to exist in pocket universes as self-contained, circumscribed and minutely thought-through as the virtual-reality environment of a computer game or the fantasy setting of a paperback trilogy. Wes Anderson’s early films Bottle Rocket (1996) and Rushmore (1998) took place in more or less the real world, but concerned fantasists who tried to make their imaginings concrete (or at least papier-mâché) reality. Since then, he has voyaged deeper into the universes created for each of his films and found avatars in visionaries and explorers like Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), the schoolboy theatrical impresario of Rushmore, and Steve Zissou (Bill Murray), the Jacques Cousteau figure in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Moonrise Kingdom (2012) was set on an imaginary island and came – like every fantasy trilogy since Tolkien – with an invented map. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), a Russian doll of shaggy-dog stories, embedded human eccentrics in an imaginary institution (and country) visited over decades. Anderson’s secondary worlds aren’t permanent idylls but places in the throes of sometimes cataclysmic change. With Fantastic Mr Fox (2009), Anderson’s earlier venture into stop-motion animation (and his only film based on a pre-existing source), the director was at last able to control all the variables – in this mode, every single throwaway prop has to be made from scratch.
Isle of Dogs – set in a near-future Japan, where the mayor of Megasaki has ordered that all the city’s dogs be exiled to an offshore refuse dump – shows the influence of everyone in the field from Jan Svankmajer to Nick Park, and makes extensive use of a quirk discovered by Willis H. O’Brien on King Kong (1933) – that the animators’ fingers cause furry puppets to ripple in a manner approximating a constant light breeze. Even more than most of Anderson’s films, Isle of Dogs will attract repeat viewings because it is so densely packed with sly visual gags and quietly hilarious minor characters (such as Tilda Swinton’s Oracle Dog, whose mystic reputation is down to quoting TV news headlines as if they were prophecies) that a single watch won’t pick up half the prizes. Many one-off images are startlingly beautiful, yet oddly melancholy, often finding fascinating things to see in literal detritus – the aftermath of a plane crash on a sea of waste paper, with the wreck at the centre of a burned circle… or the clouds of dust kicked up whenever animals or humans need to have an old-fashioned cartoon-style mêlée.
Like Guy Maddin (The Forbidden Room) and Anna Biller (The Love Witch), Anderson often looks to an eclectic variety of film sources, making collages out of unlikely bits and pieces of popular and high culture. Here, the dominant influence is Japanese cinema, with explicit nods to Kurosawa (music stings and bushido cool from Seven Samurai and echoes of the rubbish-dump community of Dodes’ka-den) and the science-fiction films of Honda Ishiro (with the space-suited boy pilot and steel-frilled mecha-dogs). But in having dogs as most of the main (and anglophone) characters, Anderson can’t avoid evoking Lady and the Tramp (1955) and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1960), albeit with the analogues of show dog Lady and street dog Tramp – voiced by Scarlett Johansson and Bryan Cranston – conducting themselves like the mysterious, slightly fey outlaws of Seijun Suzuki’s films. A supporting pack of wry, chatty cast-off dogs (voiced by Anderson regulars Murray, Ed Norton, Bob Balaban and Jeff Goldblum) come across as canine versions of the crews of mostly merry misfits of The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and The Life Aquatic.
Like many Anderson films, Isle of Dogs has a non-linear story, an omniscient narrator (Courtney B. Vance), onscreen chapter headings and an array of distancing devices – all the Japanese characters speak mostly in unsubtitled Japanese, but translators and translation devices pop up to keep the audience up to date – which theoretically draw attention to the packaging rather than the contents. However, this is such a labour of love, drawing so much from its creator’s enthusiasm for all manner of things – not least, of course, dogs – that it avoids disappearing inside its magnificent artifice. A speech that Cranston’s stray Chief gives about literally biting the hand that fed him when he muffed a chance at a good home is among the most perfectly written, staged and played scenes in recent cinema – it would be a surefire Oscar clip if awards had categories that could encompass achievements in this byway of cinema, where great acting is as much down to the hands of animators as the dialogue delivery. The trick of absurdist comedy is often to know when to take an element (here emotional, but elsewhere in the film political) so seriously that it hits home without even abandoning a fundamental ridiculousness – which turns out to be a profound reaction to the state of the real world.
Kim Newman, Sight and Sound, April 2018
With its semi-fictional Japanese setting, its construction out of comic book-like chapters and its intercut themes of nature, heroism, technology, rescue and honour, perhaps it was only natural that the film would also reverberate with echoes of Japanese pop culture and some of Japan’s greatest film directors, from Yasujiro Ozu to Kurosawa to Seijun Suzuki, as well as the Japanese monster films of the 50s and 60s, with their climactic disasters. ‘We think of it as referring to a whole range of Japanese filmmakers and Japanese culture, but Kurosawa is the main movie influence,’ says Wes Anderson.
It’s hard to even quantify Kurosawa’s impact on cinema because he arced so gracefully through a huge pendulum of genres from noir, to Samurai, to Shakespeare, to melodrama. But for Isle of Dogs, Anderson was mostly focused on Kurosawa’s contemporary (for their time), city-based movies: Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, High and Low and The Bad Sleep Well. Each of these kinetically charged films unfolds in gritty domains of crime and corruption. Each seems to transcend the dark side of the modern world with characters of the utmost honesty and humanity. And seen in each is the legendary Toshiro Mifune, whose expressive countenance inspires the look of Mayor Kobayashi.
Another branch of inspiration came from two 19th century, Edo-period woodblock print masters: Hiroshige and Hokusai, whose emphasis on colour and line deeply influenced European Impressionists. Their ukyio-e (translates to ‘pictures of the floating world’) artworks capture fleeting moments of pleasure focusing on natural landscapes, far-flung travels, flora and fauna, geishas and kabuki actors. In preparation for the film, Anderson collected a wide swath of woodblock print images and the storyboard artists trawled through the extensive collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Then, by osmosis, the folkloric Japanese style began to merge with the tactile, handmade feel of stop-motion.
Recalls animatic editor Edward Bursch: ‘The first thing I received on this film, on 12 April 2015, was the script from Wes, along with several reference images and a video. The reference images were just a few Japanese woodblock prints, a picture of a dog and a picture of a dog statue in Japan. The video was of three taiko drummers drumming this ferocious beat, and that set the mood.’
For all the Japanese (and other) influences one might joyfully trace in the film, the world it conjures is decidedly like no other. Says the film’s titles designer Erica Dorn, who grew up in Japan, of how it all comes together: ‘The world of Isle of Dogs is kind of an alternative reality. It looks and feels like Japan, but it’s a slightly dreamier version, a slightly more Wes Anderson version. That is the beauty of setting the film in a made-up city, in a made-up time: you get a certain amount of artistic license. The blending of old and new is very common in Japan. There are scenes in the film that are very minimalist and wabi-sabi; but then you switch over to the city, which is maximalist and very intense. So, there’s that feeling of Japan but it’s all filtered through Wes’s own way of seeing.’
Production notes
ISLE OF DOGS
Directed by: Wes Anderson
©: IOD Distribution LLC,
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
An American Empirical picture
In association with: Studio Babelsberg Film
Supported by: FFA – Filmförderungsanstalt, MBB – Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg
Presented by: Fox Searchlight Pictures, Indian Paintbrush
Executive Producers: Christopher Fisser, Henning Molfenter, Charlie Woebcken
Produced by: Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Steven Rales, Jeremy Dawson
Co-producer: Octavia Peissel
Production Supervisor: Angela Poschet
Production Co-ordinator: Karen Rodrigues
Financial Controller: Nuala Alen-Buckley
Production Accountant: Fry Martin
Post-production Supervisor: Gisela Evert
1st Assistant Director: James Emmott
2nd Assistant Director: Mark Lacey
3rd Assistant Directors: Emily Stevens, Francesca Alberigi, Alan Halls, Alex Moffat, Daniel Parslow
Script Supervisor: J. Caitlin Ringness
Casting by: Douglas Aibel, Kunichi Nomura
Screenplay by: Wes Anderson
Story by: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, Kunichi Nomura
Director of Photography: Tristan Oliver
Head Camera Operator: Mark Swaffield
Unit Stills Photographers: Ray Lewis, Valerie Sadoun
Visual Effects Supervisor: Lev Kolobov
Senior Visual Effects Supervisor: Tim Ledbury
Animation Director: Mark Waring
Animation Supervisor: Tobias Fouracre
Hand-drawn Animation and Design by: Gwenn Germain
Supervising Editor: Andrew Weisblum
Editors: Ralph Foster, Edward Bursch
Production Designers: Adam Stockhausen, Paul Harrod
Graphic Designer: Annie Atkins
Nutmeg Costume Design by: Juman Malouf
Head of Puppets Department: Andy Gent, Likaon
Titles by: Erica Dorn
Digital Intermediate Colourist: Asa Shoul
Original Music by: Alexandre Desplat
Conductor: Conrad Pope
Orchestrator: Conrad Pope
Music Supervisor: Randall Poster
Re-recording Mixers: Wayne Lemmer, Chris Scarabosio
Supervising Sound Editors: Wayne Lemmer, Chris Scarabosio
Digital Intermediate by: Molinare TV & Film
Special Thanks: Brian De Palma
Filmed at: 3 Mills Studio
Voice Cast
Bryan Cranston (Chief)
Koyu Rankin (Atari Kobayashi)
Edward Norton (Rex)
Bob Balaban (King)
Bill Murray (Boss)
Jeff Goldblum (Duke)
Kunichi Nomura (Mayor Kobayashi)
Akira Takayama (major domo)
Greta Gerwig (Tracy Walker)
Frances McDormand (Interpreter Nelson)
Akira Ito (Professor Watanabe)
Scarlett Johansson (Nutmeg)
Harvey Keitel (Gondo)
F. Murray Abraham (Jupiter)
Yoko Ono (Assistant-Scientist Yoko-Ono)
Tilda Swinton (Oracle)
Ken Watanabe (head surgeon)
Mari Natsuki (Auntie)
Fisher Stevens (Scrap)
Murakami Nijiro (Editor Hiroshi)
Liev Schreiber (Spots)
Courtney B. Vance (the narrator)
USA/Germany 2018©
101 mins
Digital
STOP MOTION: CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION ON THE BIG SCREEN
Fantastic Mr Fox
Thu 1 Aug 12:30; Fri 2 Aug 20:30; Sun 25 Aug 16:15
The Tale of the Fox Le Roman de Renard
Fri 2 Aug 18:15; Tue 13 Aug 20:30
Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas
Sat 3 Aug 14:00; Thu 29 Aug 20:50
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride
Sat 3 Aug 15:50; Sun 25 Aug 14:30 BFI IMAX; Fri 30 Aug 18:20
Frankenweenie
Sat 3 Aug 18:00; Sun 11 Aug 14:30 BFI IMAX; Fri 30 Aug 20:30
Jason and the Argonauts
Sun 4 Aug 12:10 (+ intro by Alan Friswell, conserver and restorer of Ray Harryhausen’s models); Wed 14 Aug 18:00
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
Sun 4 Aug 14:50 (+ intro by Alan Friswell, conserver and restorer of Ray Harryhausen’s models); Wed 14 Aug 20:30
Chicken Run
Sun 4 Aug 13:00; Sat 24 Aug 11:40
The Emperor’s Nightingale Císaruv slavík
Sun 4 Aug 20:30; Tue 13 Aug 18:20
ParaNorman
Mon 5 Aug 12:20; Thu 15 Aug 12:10; Wed 28 Aug 12:20
The Boxtrolls
Tue 6 Aug 12:20; Mon 12 Aug 14:10; Sat 17 Aug 12:00
Journey to the Beginning of Time Cesta do praveku
Tue 6 Aug 20:30; Thu 22 Aug 18:30
Isle of Dogs
Wed 7 Aug 12:10; Sat 10 Aug 20:30; Sun 25 Aug 18:30
Kubo and the Two Strings
Thu 8 Aug 12:20; Sat 10 Aug 18:15 (+ Q&A with Travis Knight, director and President & CEO of LAIKA); Fri 30 Aug 12:20
Missing Link
Fri 9 Aug 12:30; Mon 26 Aug 15:20
Coraline
Fri 16 Aug 12:30; Sat 17 Aug 15:30; Wed 21 Aug 12:15; Thu 22 Aug 14:20
Stop-Motion Shorts Scene – BFI Backed + Q&A
Fri 16 Aug 18:10
Funday: Stop-Motion Children’s Favourites
Sun 18 Aug 12:20
Stopmotion + Q&A with director Robert Morgan
Wed 21 Aug 20:40
Aardman Shorts
Sat 24 Aug 14:30
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Tue 27 Aug 20:40
LAIKA: Frame x Frame
Embark on a journey behind the scenes of LAIKA, one of the world’s foremost pioneers in stop-motion animation. This immersive new exhibition will transport you into the boundary-pushing art and science behind every one of the nearly one million meticulously constructed frames that bring each of LAIKA’s five groundbreaking feature films to life.
Opens Mon 12 Aug
Thanks to Jez Stewart, BFI National Archive
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
Questions/comments? Contact the Programme Notes team by email