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 Bow Wow Wow On comic death and dying in "Year of the Dog"
A portrait of mental illness brought to the fore by the death of a dying
lump of a dog named "Pencil," "Year of the Dog" stars Molly Shannon
as Peggy, a drear crackpot, a bore with no life beyond office job and
needy hound, a life spent between grande Starbucks.
Writer-director Mike White, who wrote "Chuck and Buck" and starred
as its gay stalker with reveries (and arias) of prehensile sexual
exploration, expanded on his statement that his directorial debut is a
"comedy that's not funny" to Filmmaker magazine, "I find it funny,
but it plays at such a deadpan level for so much of it that I feel like
some of the comedy is missed." Or missing, perhaps? "And there are
also so many minor keys in it. My preference for comedy is something
that's played so straight that, in a way, you're wrong-footed. I think
it's a comedy; it definitely plays for laughs, but it plays with the
audience. As somebody who sees a lot of movies, when something's not
pre-digested, it's very pleasant because you're like, `I don't exactly
know how to take this.'"
Interminable, morally and psychologically incoherent, it is a
soulless bore. Brightly lit, bluntly framed and criminally dim, "Year
of the Dog" is Todd Solondz light, as infuriating as a stone in a shoe
on a ninety-minute walk somewhere you wouldn't want to go. This is a
failure worthy of sustained contumely. It seems to go on for hours.
"Dog" is more tedious than it is skin-crawling; the kind of movie
you'd expect the people who don't walk out would light up the room with
the soft blue glow of their cell phones. You miss the steady yet soulful
hand of director Richard Linklater on White's script for "School of
Rock."
White's convinced Shannon to look beyond her age, weeping through
creases and wrinkles and bulging veins at her temples, flashing her big
teeth and riotous freckles like an angry, lost woman of 50. There is an
absurdism only just shy of snark in the pastel interiors of offices and
apartments, and most conversations are shot in head-on medium close-ups,
with 180-degree reverse angles on the other person. White also places
his actors where they have to squint into the sun. (With this tic, if
any of his characters were Asian, White would be accused of racism.) The
general glow of the lighting, however, by cinematographer Tim Orr
("George Washington," "All the Real Girls," "Raising Victor
Vargas") is inspired, narcotic-bright, capturing the flat blue light
under incessant haze of Southern California somewhere past the 10 and
101 between Xanax and Celexa. Even the genuine empathy of actors like
Peter Sarsgard and John C. O'Reilly is vanquished by intentionally
tepid, wormy performances. (Laura Dern is shrill in a way I'd probably
be as well if this ass were my sister-in-law.)
After the sudden death of Pencil, Peggy cracks up. "He had a really
unique personality," she says of her dead dog, admittedly cute but also
pretty much a throw pillow. She tries to date neighbor Al (O'Reilly), a
hunter and knife collector, and they share a scene which includes a
long, gibberish answer to "Were you ever married?" that could have
been followed by "Are you a virgin?" and "Did you ever finish
kindergarten?" Peggy befriends dog trainer Sarsgard, a celibate,
apparently bisexual dog trainer named Newt who indicates he was sexually
abused as a child in a religious cult. (In a turn of desperate
erotomania, she brags on a nonexistent relationship with Newt; her
friends reassure her, "Even retarded, crippled people get married.")
Peggy's journey begins as she annoys friends and co-workers with
questions like, "Do you have any soy milk?" and quickly becomes a
child-abusing, vicious-dog-enabling, horror-show naïf, a vegan
animal-rights maniac, embezzling hundreds of dollars of corporate cash
on behalf of animal-rescue groups. Peggy's consummate stupidity and
Shannon's dreary, self-pitying performance makes for a wearying slog.
The costume design is consistent with White's hum of disdain. Peggy's
got one get-up with a crucifix necklace above white coveralls that best
demonstrates the sartorial clues that shriek and wail a single sustained
sentence: "Run away!"
Tragically, White chose not to go the "Chuck and Buck" direction
and turn this earnest bore into a bomb-throwing animal-rights activist.
(Perhaps early drafts trafficked in mass murder.) He makes the impulse
to become part of PETA (who cleared the use of their trademark) and
other animal-rights groups seem naïve, misguided, needy and deeply
selfish, so why not go whole hog, not chicken out, and make her an
incendiary terrorist as well? (The word "Holocaust" is tossed about,
but for White, as he notes, "joke" is defined as "rhetorical
provocation.")
There is an image of a dirt-streaked Chevy crammed with fifteen dogs
saved from euthanasia that amuses, and the scene afterward, as "Joan of
Echo Park" watches helplessly as they demolish her home has energy. But
all you really want for Peggy is to see her jailed, silenced, reviled
and demonized on trash television. "I wish I was a more articulate
person," she Whites. I wish you would just shut up. "Year of the Dog" fetches on Friday.
Also by Ray Pride When Trash Fails
Tip of the Week
The Other Side of the Mountain
Tip of the Week
Blair Witch Hunt
Tip of the Week
The Mourning After
Tip of the Week
Moving Pictures
Tip of the Week
Tip of the Week
Killer Looks
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