White God (2014) Hungarian film about a Girl and her Dog.

[Talulah, really!]

So, yeah, this. A Hungarian film about a young girl who loses her loveable big dog but through various misadventures it loyally finds its way back to her, sounds like sentimental tripe you've seen a hundred times, right? Wrong. This is a rich, wonderful strange four legged odyssey in a film that majestically manages the merging of dirt under the fingernails social realism with the wildest flights of visual fantasy. It does this right from the opening with two contrasting scenes of stark visual power, one a dreamlike sequence of rich lyrical symbolism which signals where the film is headed to then in an abrupt change of tone, a literally gut wrenching shot of what goes in a modern abattoir. This is where the heroine, Lila's Father works. At the start of the film, he begrudgingly agrees to look after his estranged daughter as her Mother is moving abroad temporarily with her new partner. Lila has brought along her beloved dog Hagen. Hagen is a crossbred and in the city that means he has to have a permit, a permit her overbearing Father who has no love for the animal is too miserly to buy. The film settles into domestic naturism as we see Lila and Father fail to adjust to each other with poor Hagen becoming the emblem of their differences culminating in a heartbreaking scene where he dumps the dog by a derelict flyover[nb]The city has a anonymous everyanynowhere quality that makes the later scenes more nightmarishly effective.[/nb] before ruthlessly driving off with Lila frantically screaming as she watches helplessly from the back seat as the poor dog fruitlessly chases after the car before growing smaller and smaller as he shrinks out of view. The film then splits into two strands following Lila and Hagen down their different paths, she tries to track him down whilst also taking her first faltering steps into adolescent rebellion and finding her own identity. And while she has to grow up, the now abandoned Hagen has to smarten up and become streetwise because life for a mixed breed dog is tough in this town. At first he waits stoically in the grand Greyfriar's Bobby tradition for Lila to return but when she doesn't, hungry and alone he is forced to seek out other ways to survive. Oliver Twist like he falls in with a gang of street mutts who hustle and look out for each other and they need to as they are pursued by a group of determined dog catchers, armed with grasping poles. As the dogs try to escape the film suddenly revs up into full on modern action movie mode, its Benji as directed by Paul Greengrass, excellently tense stuff and by shooting much of these sequences from a dog's eye view means they loom ominously over our hapless hounds with the same elemental terrifying nastiness as the Childcatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Our hero evades them only to fall into something far worse. He is found and then sold to dog fight trainer who arranges fights and bets over the dark net that take place in out of town warehouses and he sees potential in Hagen and in a spectacularly nasty sequence we see him training the dog in his rundown estate, injecting him with muscle supplements, beating him to build his aggression then taking him to the fight pit for a savage fight to the death. This is only about halfway into the film, there is still a lot to happen and it moves into the area of something more allegorical and fantastic with some wonderful images, vivid with visual poetry, hence the no wish to spoil the rest of it. It is well worth catching it if it turns up an arthouse near you like it did with me (there was a limited run, usual thing with foreign films) or look out for it on streams, services or other forms of media. It is a very interesting take on a familiar subgenre, the stoic animal's journey home film for lack of a snappy title. There's something in the contrast between the expressiveness we read in an animal's face versus their inability to speak that makes for a wonderfully involving pathos that works so well in the cinematic medium. Having to endure what fate falls upon them without having the words to protest or talk their way out of it.[nb]Obviously there are thousands of talking animals in cartoons and voiced over live action films but they are horses of a slightly different colour.[/nb] They can never explain what is going on or who they are when they fall from their comfortable worlds and I think this appeals to the child in all of us, who knows that situation only too well when they fall foul of adult situations they haven't yet got the articulacy for, 'it's so unfair', we bleat and thus we fall for the poor put upon beasts burdened by the voicelessness in the dreadful situations of all classic animals in peril films like 'Black Beauty' who can only stoically suffer with occasional moments of triumphantly spirited striking out before reaching their promised lands. TL:DR? The Battered Street Dogs Roam.

[BlodwynPig]

Spoilers! Saw trailer and will seek it out before reading your analysis

[Bhazor]

So its not one of those Hungarian girl and dog videos then? Damn.

[Herbert Ashe]

My enjoyment of this at any given time was generally proportional to the number of dogs on screen.

Although thematically it's clear why we had Lili involved in the orchestra, I found the sections related to this pretty uninteresting. But my main irritation was the opening flash-forward; I'd seen various publicity stills so it wasn't exactly a Spoiler, but it added to the feelings I had through much of the middle of

Spoiler alert

hurry up with the gazillions of rioting dogs already

[close]

. Generally I liked it though; at the very least, the good bits are really worth seeing.

(I think I'd be interested in a remake of this by George Miller)

[Ted-Maul]

Just finished watching this. I really enjoyed it so thanks for the recommendation. I thought my dog, who was laying next to me on the couch as i watched, might have shown more interest in this, what with all the onscreen canines, whining and barking and howling etc. but he largely ignored it. Until

Spoiler alert

the trumpet playing at the end

[close]

which he seemed to love - pricking his ears up and staring at the screen with rapt attention. Must be an actual dog thing.....

[Small Man Big Horse]

I loved this but dear christ it's one weird fucker of a film. I knew the premise in that it was a girl and her lost dog trying to find each other, but that was it, and wasn't expecting it to go in the...directions that it did. Especially at the end

Spoiler alert

when it basically became Rise of the Planet of the Dogs, but in such a beautifully odd way.

[close]

I should point out here that I fucking love dogs, they're the best thing in the world other than women and the internet, and even went to Battersea Dogs Home last weekend so I could play with some. You're not supposed to let them lick and chew on your hands but I got away with it when the staff weren't around, and even sneaked in a quick game of ball. They loved me too, I'm like a frickin' dog whisperer. Ahem, anyway, the point of mentioning this is that the first thirty minutes or so I spent going "Awww, good dog!", "No, bad people, bad!", and "Noooo, doggy, don't do that!" until he was

Spoiler alert

sold to the dog fighting guy and from that point on I had to disassociate myself from the film, reminding myself that it was all fake because it was all just so horrible to watch. I didn't think it'd actually draw me back in as I was so sickened by it all, but then of course it goes in a completely different direction to what you might expect, and I was back on board and loving it. The ending's amazing as well, just perfect, and this might go down as one of my favourite films, despite some minor issues that I have with it.

[close]

Oh, and I liked the subplot with the girl and her father and had no problem with that, so it was all a bit of a win win. Which is always nice. Whatever the case it's a much watch film, and really quite unique.

Mrs SMBH will never watch it though unfortunately, which is a bit of a shame as she'd love some bits of it, but would absolutely hate

Spoiler alert

the scenes where the dog was tortured

[close]

. I'd love to see a fan edit actually, you could probably cut out about ten minutes and easily make it PG friendly.

[great_badir]

Sooooooo, what, it's, like, a bit like Sam Fuller's White Dog then?

[Small Man Big Horse]

Nah, they're two very different films. But I don't want to give too much away as it's best watched knowing as little as possible in advance.

[great_badir]

Nah, they're two very different films. But I don't want to give too much away as it's best watched knowing as little as possible in advance.

Ah, fairsnuff.