Hey gang, Ben here. Today I continue my last minute Oscar catch-up round with a look at Dogtooth, a Greek indie nominated in this year's Best Foreign Feature category.
Dogtooth is one of the more obscure titles in this year's Oscar race. It's currently on Netflix Instant Watch, so... watch it. I can't guarantee you'll love it, but I can guarantee that someday you'll be having drinks with friends and say, "Hey, remember that part where the dad bashed that defenseless woman over the head with a VCR?" or "Wasn't that great when those sisters started erotically licking each other for prizes?" Unfortunately, your friends will most likely not have seen Dogtooth, which will put a strain on your already limited social life. Sorry.
Dogtooth takes the question of nature vs. nurture to the extreme. Somewhere in the Greek countryside is a walled-off compound where a father (Christos Stergioglou) and mother (Michelle Valley) have raised their children in total isolation. Older Sister (Aggeliki Papoulia), Younger Sister (Mary Tsoni), and Son (Christos Passalis) have never left the compound, as their parents have warned them that vicious creatures known as "cats" prowl the outside world looking for wayward children to mutilate. Their parents teach them bogus vocabulary lessons in order to secure their isolation: "sea" is the word for a large armchair and "telephone" means salt shaker. The airplanes that frequently cross overhead are actually miniature toy sized and occasionally fall in the yard to be collected as prizes by the fastest child. The father is the only one who leaves the compound, braving the outside world to bring fresh supplies. Back in reality, he runs a factory, and tells his co-workers that his wife is infirm and can't receive visitors. Son is about 18 or 20, so the father sees fit to pay the female factory security guard (Anna Kalaitzidou) to come to the compound (blindfolded, of course) to relieve him sexually. He does not see any reason to make such accommodations for his daughters. That presumption about his children's needs - almost benign compared to his atrocious fundamental assumption that lying to his children about everything under the goddamn sun is the right way to go - is the beginning of the family's unraveling. Lies, violence, and incest, oh my!
See that poster at the top of this post? The one that has New York Times writer Nicolas Rapold exclaiming "HILARIOUS!" in letters smaller only than the title of the movie itself? That is seriously one of the most fucked advertising glaze-overs I have ever seen. Just to make the point clear, I've tracked down Rapold's original article and the quote in question, which in a more complete version reads, "a travesty of innocence that’s by turns hilarious, macabre and baffling." I've seen movie posters twist a quote before, but never quite as insanely as boiling that down to "HILARIOUS!" What's truly HILARIOUS! is the poor sucker who picks Dogtooth up at Blockbuster (R.I.P. almost) expecting Happy Gilmore.
So while Dogtooth isn't HILARIOUS!, it is pretty great, and funny in a mortifying sort of way. The mise-en-scene is flawless. Every actor in the movie's tiny cast really sells the isolation and backwardness of this insane family. Yorgos Lanthimos' direction is minimally impactful, as it should be. Many shots are noticeably ill-framed, as if to reflect the fundamental wrongness of the situation. The movie's nude scenes, for example, are often framed so that the nipple or crotch area straddles the edge of the frame uncomfortably. Contrasted against the symmetry or even just plainness of the rest of the movie's shot compositions, it's disconcerting. That's what I like so much about Dogtooth: on the surface it looks like any other indie, but what's hiding underneath is so much more sinister!
I've been thinking a lot about Dogtooth over the last few days. I flip-flop as to whether or not the movie’s ending – specifically the final shot – is a cop out or not. On the one hand, I love how open ended it is, and I’ve been frantically running through a million plausible scenarios concerning what happens right after the movie cuts to credits. On the other hand, I think showing the outcome for better or worse would have been cathartic, and being left with a big fat question mark is one of the worst cases of cinematic blue balls in recent memory.
But fuck it. I really love Dogtooth. It's a movie that will make you laugh, then make you question your moral compass for laughing instead of throwing up, and then throw up, and then shake your head at the madness of it all.
-Ben