year of the dog is very good. probably the weakest of white’s major films but still very good. it treads more on chuck and buck territory than on that of the good girl (the other two major films–the others seem like films he writes to be able to make these films) and doesn’t evoke either the discomfort of the former or the existential melancholy of the latter, but shares with both its comic generosity and refusal to judge or even take up predictable positions on the idiosyncrasies of its characters. as you may remember from the ads, this is about a woman who has few human relationships and all but falls apart when her dog suddenly dies. i’m not going to say too much more about the plot at this point except to note that, among other things, it functions as an antidote to the world view of films such as notes on a scandal which cannot imagine the single, sexually inactive woman as anything but a sociopath in waiting. the protagonist here too engages in some fairly questionable behaviour, but its source is located elsewhere, in an over-abundance of love, not the lack of it.
what weakens the film is a tendency to present the protagonist’s foils (especially her brother and sister-in-law, and some co-workers) in an overly sitcommy fashion–both in the characterizations and in the framing. some of these characters swerve a little too close to caricature at points, though white always avoids making the easy laugh the payoff. you can imagine another type of hip comedy with all these characters, in which they would be nothing but caricature and catch-phrases/signature moves (the difference between buck from the first film and napoleon from napoleon dynamite might be a good analogy). and he does draw wonderful performances from the cast. molly shannon is amazing, as is john c. reilly in a small role that starts out at the edge of caricature but is invested with a quiet dignity. still, i think white would have been better served with miguel arteta handling the direction–there’s a tonal quality that the first two films have that this one doesn’t. but the writing is as strong as ever, and white steers away as always from the moralizing narrative of trauma as permanent disability. i’m saying this very badly, but what i’m trying to get at is that in chuck and buck and year of the dog the pathological is not the only or primary mode in which response to trauma is imagined.
anyway, watch it and let’s talk.
oh, as a warning: this film contains a few scenes which will be very hard for dog-lovers to watch. and i actually wonder if both sunhee and i liked it so much because we started out with an identification with the protagonist’s love of her dog, which not everyone may share.
I agree with your reading, of the film’s strengths and its weaknesses. Shannon, in particular, gives a tough, ego-less performance that earns every bit of emotional resonance that the film seeks. And I think you actually discuss the film’s generous acceptance of Shannon’s obsession quite well. I was trying to think of another film that was so willing to embrace and appreciate a character’s extreme behavior, without triumphantly affirming or ironizing (ironicifying?). Maybe Leaving Las Vegas? That’s a poor analogy in many ways, but if you peel away some of this film’s weaknesses, at center you have a portrait of a person losing control but recovering it through a rigorous, off-putting personal dedication to a fixed idea. I’m not sure it’s healthy, but the film resists–maybe even refutes?–our tendency to pathologize.
But I wish the film were as tough as Shannon. Arnab’s nailed the secondary characters, less problematic as performed but written and directed with too much of a sense of quirk. The soundtrack was nails on a chalkboard, xylophonic cutesy shit constantly derailing the bite of the scenes. And at film’s end all the minor characters get an unearned, too-easy reprieve, each given a chance to be seen as generous and thoughtful, which heightens that sense of the whole thing being whimsy…. and I think that really decenters the final voiceover. [MINOR SPOILER] As Shannon’s character speaks, via an email to all of these people in her life, of finding the thing to love in her life, we *should* have been faced with more ambiguity, more of a question about her decision. When she says she’s found a sense of love in her life, on a bus headed to an animal-rights protest, I believe her–I believe this performance and the character’s arc. But I think the film would have been much, much better if I didn’t know that I was right to believe her–if I had to question my sense of that “triumph,” I think the film would have been as strong as Chuck and Buck.
Still, it *is* worth seeing and, again, let me trumpet Shannon’s performance.
i disagree with you a little bit about the ending. i think the rehabilitation of the boss is the bit that belongs in another film. i thought the behaviour of her brother and sister-in-law was consistent throughout–supportive without ever understanding what drove her. regina king and her boyfriend, on the other hand, seem to have walked onto the set from failed auditions for the roles of wacky young black people in the 40 year old virgin or something. the scenes in the office are the weakest, and the portrayal of the boss suffers more than that of her family from white trying a little too hard to show that even the seemingly normal people are all neurotic-obsessed; but maybe it comes down again to performance–i think dern’s character might actually be worse than the boss as written, but dern is just so damned good.
i think the film suffers also for two other reasons: 1) shannon’s legal transgressions (at home and at work) are too major for the kind of easy rehabilitation she receives from everyone around her; perhaps white wants to underline a vision of a more generous world, but i think he overloads what she must be forgiven. and 2) there’s no chuck here to shannon’s buck. what makes the first film so great is how it turns our identification with those two characters around. we buy buck’s redemption there partly because it is balanced by the “fall” of chuck. here all we have is shannon. unlike mike, i didn’t find the final scenes so triumphant–white undercuts quite well any tendency we might have to see her as “healed”–but i agree that the film lets everyone, including the audience, off too easy. he’s almost like a happy todd solondz.
your post arnab made me want to watch chuck and buck, which i had not seen. i loved it. i am still thinking about it five days later. i loved it to distraction.
besides presenting a lateral, rehabilitative view of the “loser” character and, as you say, de-pathologizing representations of weirdness (not sure how trauma fits into this, though?), both the dog film and chuck seem brilliant to me (chuck in particular) in representing the unconscious. buck is the time-stuck, fixated erotic unconscious that won’t go away. things get better when the unconscious is embraced and integrated by the superego (chuck) and wholeness is restored to the self (chuck and buck as two aspects of the same psyche). the unconscious loses its sting, becomes a serene part of the past. this is not to bypass a queer reading of the film, which is entirely compatible.
something similar happens with molly shannon’s character (though maybe less successfully; certainly dog is much less compelling than chuck, for all the reasons you and mike mention). after the death of her dog peggy finds herself stuck in a pathological situation, but once the situation gets embraced and integrated into her life in a fulfilling rather than stunting way, the environment around her (a superego of sorts) relaxes and resumes its humming. reading the film symbolically may make sense of the seemingly too-easy acceptance she receives both by her workplace and by her family at the end.
that’s an interesting reading, gio, but as i recall the first film, my take was that at the end it is buck who has become more whole whereas chuck seems more uncomfortable with himself. i am thinking of that (last?) scene in the restaurant where they make eye contact and it is buck who breaks it and goes on with his evening, while chuck seems out of sorts.
have you seen the good girl?
it’s not the superego’s job to be comfortable with itself, no?
i’ve see the good girl but don’t remember it except to know that i like it. i want to see it again now.
i don’t use capital letters when i type online because i’m from the 70s and i’m so cool.