Mike White's "Year of the Dog" stars Molly Shannon as Peggy, a frail, submissive, emotionally sensitive woman who spends her days taking abuse, being snidely judged and dutifully working at a dull, white collar job. Free time is spent cuddling with Pencil, Peggy's pet dog. The duo watch TV, eat microwave dinners and sleep together like a seasoned couple. Peggy's mocked by her coworkers, family, friends and boss. She takes it. Pencil doesn't judge her.
When Pencil dies, Peggy traumatically confronts the fact that she has been pushed towards life's margins. Single, childless and "of a certain age", the dog's death sparks an existential crisis. Peggy responds by becoming increasingly neurotic. Realizing that society's apathy toward her dead pet masks a larger cruelty, a larger social violence, Peggy veers wildly in the opposite direction. She becomes an "animal lover" who "takes cares of animals". Later she funnels money from her company's business account into the accounts of various PETA-like charities. She also becomes a vegan. Mike White is himself a vegan and PETA activist.
Far from a political tract, though, the film paints Peggy as a supremely messed up individual. This has led to animal lovers bashing White for painting animal lovers/vegans/PETA etc as nut-jobs who "love animals" because they "can't get along with humans". But "In The Year Of The Dog" is doing something completely different. This is Errol Morris territory, White painting everyone as being as neurotic as Peggy, be they overprotective parents, yuppies, work obsessed bosses, hunting fanatics, marriage-fixated dopes or lug-headed consumers. Everyone has their own obsession, their own symptoms. Indeed, Peggy's obsessions may even be less dead-ended, shallow and self obsessed than that of others in the film. But only marginally.
While White spends most of the picture skewering the idea of "universal truths", "normalcy" and "mental health", he's also clear in his painting of Peggy as a highly messed up individual. The question the film asks is whether self-actualisation - Peggy's act of finally "becoming someone" and "asserting herself" - is itself a kind of hollow fiction; who you are is what you aren't, everyone is neurotic somewhere, all neuroses mask a desire for control, and what you do masks only what you can't. The Self is not only Other, but total damage.
The film ends with Peggy boarding a giant bus packed with other animal lovers and activists. Her transformation into a radical is both mocked and celebrated. Once a doormat, she's now a warrior. Once a victim, she's now fighting back against a society that sweeps violence under a facade of kindness/normalcy. But Peggy's makeover is also something pathetic. She is who she is because she can't function any other way.
8/10 – Worth one viewing.
When Pencil dies, Peggy traumatically confronts the fact that she has been pushed towards life's margins. Single, childless and "of a certain age", the dog's death sparks an existential crisis. Peggy responds by becoming increasingly neurotic. Realizing that society's apathy toward her dead pet masks a larger cruelty, a larger social violence, Peggy veers wildly in the opposite direction. She becomes an "animal lover" who "takes cares of animals". Later she funnels money from her company's business account into the accounts of various PETA-like charities. She also becomes a vegan. Mike White is himself a vegan and PETA activist.
Far from a political tract, though, the film paints Peggy as a supremely messed up individual. This has led to animal lovers bashing White for painting animal lovers/vegans/PETA etc as nut-jobs who "love animals" because they "can't get along with humans". But "In The Year Of The Dog" is doing something completely different. This is Errol Morris territory, White painting everyone as being as neurotic as Peggy, be they overprotective parents, yuppies, work obsessed bosses, hunting fanatics, marriage-fixated dopes or lug-headed consumers. Everyone has their own obsession, their own symptoms. Indeed, Peggy's obsessions may even be less dead-ended, shallow and self obsessed than that of others in the film. But only marginally.
While White spends most of the picture skewering the idea of "universal truths", "normalcy" and "mental health", he's also clear in his painting of Peggy as a highly messed up individual. The question the film asks is whether self-actualisation - Peggy's act of finally "becoming someone" and "asserting herself" - is itself a kind of hollow fiction; who you are is what you aren't, everyone is neurotic somewhere, all neuroses mask a desire for control, and what you do masks only what you can't. The Self is not only Other, but total damage.
The film ends with Peggy boarding a giant bus packed with other animal lovers and activists. Her transformation into a radical is both mocked and celebrated. Once a doormat, she's now a warrior. Once a victim, she's now fighting back against a society that sweeps violence under a facade of kindness/normalcy. But Peggy's makeover is also something pathetic. She is who she is because she can't function any other way.
8/10 – Worth one viewing.