Isle of Dogs (5/5 Stars)

 Crisis! Setting: The Japanese Archipelago, Megasaki Prefecture. An epidemic of snout fever is raging through the population of dogs with no signs of abatement. Mayor Kobayashi initiates a dramatic solution: Ban all dogs to the nearby trash island. Wholly Moses! Whatever happened to man’s best friend?

So begins in efficient precision the conceit of Writer/Director Wes Anderson and co.’s third masterpiece in a row (following Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel) the Isle of Dogs. I say Wes Anderson and co. because it so obvious from his last three movies that he has assembled an extraordinary crew of artists around him. These movies are quite frankly on another level. A few words of effusive praise can be spent on the look of the movie. It is rendered in spare crisp black and white tones, obviously heavily influenced, nay in direct homage, to the efficient elegance of the best of Japanese art. It is an animated movie, using the same stop-motion technology and style Anderson previously used in Fantastic Mr. Fox. As such, the entirety of each and every frame is designed. And what design! Pick a frame at random and you’ve got a painting.

After the dogs are unfairly marooned, a young boy named Atari pilots his way to the Isle of Dogs to find his beloved dog Spot. Atari his helped in his search by a group of dogs with names such as Chief, Rex, Boss, King, and Duke, voiced by such A-listers and Anderson regulars as Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, and Jeff Goldblum respectively. Why do they help the child? Because they are dogs and dogs love children. Such cute logic is all over this movie. (For example, a not-so-subtle reason for the nefariousness of the Kobayashi clan is the fact that they are associated with cats. The ancient grudge between cats and dogs is continued). The plot is disarmingly simple and the sympathy it commands so persuasive (unless you’re are some kind of cat-lover/dog-hater) that I expect this movie will become the favorite movie of legions of children. For once, grateful parents will have at least one movie their kids are obsessed with that they would not mind watching a hundred times over.

Isle of Dogs is routinely funny in that wry and dry Wes Anderson way. His humor has gotten sharper over the years and his last three movies are a testament to that. There is a particularly good joke concerning a dog, called the Oracle, who the other dogs believe has special powers. Actually she has figured out how to watch T.V. and is letting everyone know what she is sees on the news.

The pathos works as well. One flashback scene shows the first meeting of Atari and Spots, his newly assigned guard-dog. Spot, as if a seasoned professional, describes at length his employment to Atari, the various functions he has and his and commitment to Atari’s well-being. “In other words,” Spots concludes, “I am your dog.” There is a simple profundity to that which just killed me.

I have left to discuss perhaps the more original and inventive detail of Isle of Dogs. The human characters are Japanese and speak Japanese, which the movie chooses to not provide subtitles for. The barks of the dogs, however, have been rendered into English. This provides for a unique experience in which half of the dialogue is not understandable, or is being translated by more-or-less reliable translators. There are enough visual cues so that an English only speaker can definitely understand what is going on, but the decision made by Anderson to not provide a translation of the Japanese is an interesting one. Like Lost in Translation, I expect part of the experience is not understanding the Japanese language. Or it could be that Anderson wanted to make it clear that the Japanese and the dogs indeed speak different languages and do not fully understand each other. In any case, it works.

I always pegged Wes Anderson as more of a “cat guy”. Obviously, I was wrong.