Funny how 'God' is 'Dog' backwards. The title, "White God", an often shocking, though not gratuitous or exploitative, Hungarian drama seems to allude to the idea that dogs gaze upon human-beings as Gods: the keepers of sustenance; harbingers of healthcare; source of entertainment; in equal part capable of both love and wrath. How does one pitch the film? Try to image "Homeward Bound", in Hell, with just the lone mutt by himself. Did I enjoy the experience? I suppose so. Will everybody? I doubt it.
Certainly, from a technical standpoint, the film is quite stunning: the logistics involving large packs of dogs are impressively coordinated; the way the film conveys an animal's perspective of the world from the lower levels of the city streets is totally convincing and, most unnervingly, fights between dogs are realistic. It is certainly too sophisticated to be a genre or an exploitation film, so don't be fooled by any promotional material you might have uncovered of it being a 'dogs rising up' horror piece; instead, expect something more nuanced - something which dips into suburban family drama when it isn't treading close to the boundaries of what many might consider to be in good taste.
"White God" opens with some imagery which, I suppose, is designed to sell the film as some kind of horror piece: streets are empty, cars lie abandoned - everyone has disappeared. The whole thing has a sense of "28 Days Later" about it, suggesting something apocalyptical has happened or that we have lost control of society. From nowhere, a young girl cycles through, looking for something, and our appetites are whetted: just how did we get to this point? The film then flashes back to happier times: warm lighting on a summer's day and play in a park between young Lili (Zsófia Psotta) and her dog Hagen. She is dropped off by her mother at her father's house for a few weeks, her parents separated: we sense they are two very different people, in that she is off to Australia for a business conference - a high-flying, ladder-climbing modern woman - and he works in an abattoir.
We sense Lili and her father, played by Sándor Zsótér, have lost touch - the girl is perhaps, taking more after her mother than her father. He has bought for her a bottle of bubble-making fluid, inferring some time has passed between when last they met - she rejects it; she's 'not a little kid anymore.' Director Kornél Mundruczó moves things on to band-practise after Lili's father and neighbours take a disliking to the dog, impressively constructing a makeshift orchestra of sixth-formers building to a resounding climax while Hagen has been hidden in a cupboard and the conductor has been introduced as a teacher who does not take to fooling around. Back at home, Hagen is proving to be a problem - the government require legislature for dogs at properties, something father isn't prepared to pay for on account of despising his ex-wife. The situation comes to a hilt; Lili's ego gets the better of her, and the-actually-quite-amicable solution of leaving Hagen with a kennel for a smaller fee is binned for merely abandoning him at the side of the road.
What is curious about the film at this juncture is that it fractures into two separate strands: Hagen's misadventures as a vagrant hound and Lili's coming to terms with what has happened on top of her naturally unfolding life anyway. We follow Hagen around for a while, watching him make friends with other strays; salivate over sausages in the windows of butcher shops and dodge being caught by the pound, before things take an especially nasty turn. Mundruczó depicts all this in conjunction with Lili's life, as she struggles with the adult world and clashes with authority figures - inferring in the process a bind between the two and how, irrespective of your species, survival is hard-going.
It would be wrong to say that the harshly juxtaposed nature of either strand hurts the film, just that it is depicting, on the one hand, a rather harrowing narrative of life as a stray animal and, on the other, telling the story of an uneasy house-bound situation involving an adolescent and her father, the sort of story which might soar in its own feature. In opening the film with a rather dramatic edit from Lili playing in a park with Hagen to her father working at the slaughter-house, Mundruczó seems to attempt to highlight the fine-line between the roles animals play in our society: we love them and they are our companions, but we are cold and detached enough to kill others for the purposes of food. This is toyed with later on when a new owner of Hagen demonstrates his love for the dog when it turns out to be an especially good fighter.
It is, ultimately, a little tricky to know what to make of the film - it has its moments but it wobbles in what it's doing too often to awe us. Its balancing act, of that of a relationships drama between father and daughter and teenager and dog, is as good as it probably could have been without focussing solely on just the one strand and ignoring the other. What, for instance, happens to all the dogs once the events of the film have transpired? Additionally, I would doubt whether Lili's father would be a new-found convert to the blighters. Regardless, there is certainly something to be said about "White God".
Certainly, from a technical standpoint, the film is quite stunning: the logistics involving large packs of dogs are impressively coordinated; the way the film conveys an animal's perspective of the world from the lower levels of the city streets is totally convincing and, most unnervingly, fights between dogs are realistic. It is certainly too sophisticated to be a genre or an exploitation film, so don't be fooled by any promotional material you might have uncovered of it being a 'dogs rising up' horror piece; instead, expect something more nuanced - something which dips into suburban family drama when it isn't treading close to the boundaries of what many might consider to be in good taste.
"White God" opens with some imagery which, I suppose, is designed to sell the film as some kind of horror piece: streets are empty, cars lie abandoned - everyone has disappeared. The whole thing has a sense of "28 Days Later" about it, suggesting something apocalyptical has happened or that we have lost control of society. From nowhere, a young girl cycles through, looking for something, and our appetites are whetted: just how did we get to this point? The film then flashes back to happier times: warm lighting on a summer's day and play in a park between young Lili (Zsófia Psotta) and her dog Hagen. She is dropped off by her mother at her father's house for a few weeks, her parents separated: we sense they are two very different people, in that she is off to Australia for a business conference - a high-flying, ladder-climbing modern woman - and he works in an abattoir.
We sense Lili and her father, played by Sándor Zsótér, have lost touch - the girl is perhaps, taking more after her mother than her father. He has bought for her a bottle of bubble-making fluid, inferring some time has passed between when last they met - she rejects it; she's 'not a little kid anymore.' Director Kornél Mundruczó moves things on to band-practise after Lili's father and neighbours take a disliking to the dog, impressively constructing a makeshift orchestra of sixth-formers building to a resounding climax while Hagen has been hidden in a cupboard and the conductor has been introduced as a teacher who does not take to fooling around. Back at home, Hagen is proving to be a problem - the government require legislature for dogs at properties, something father isn't prepared to pay for on account of despising his ex-wife. The situation comes to a hilt; Lili's ego gets the better of her, and the-actually-quite-amicable solution of leaving Hagen with a kennel for a smaller fee is binned for merely abandoning him at the side of the road.
What is curious about the film at this juncture is that it fractures into two separate strands: Hagen's misadventures as a vagrant hound and Lili's coming to terms with what has happened on top of her naturally unfolding life anyway. We follow Hagen around for a while, watching him make friends with other strays; salivate over sausages in the windows of butcher shops and dodge being caught by the pound, before things take an especially nasty turn. Mundruczó depicts all this in conjunction with Lili's life, as she struggles with the adult world and clashes with authority figures - inferring in the process a bind between the two and how, irrespective of your species, survival is hard-going.
It would be wrong to say that the harshly juxtaposed nature of either strand hurts the film, just that it is depicting, on the one hand, a rather harrowing narrative of life as a stray animal and, on the other, telling the story of an uneasy house-bound situation involving an adolescent and her father, the sort of story which might soar in its own feature. In opening the film with a rather dramatic edit from Lili playing in a park with Hagen to her father working at the slaughter-house, Mundruczó seems to attempt to highlight the fine-line between the roles animals play in our society: we love them and they are our companions, but we are cold and detached enough to kill others for the purposes of food. This is toyed with later on when a new owner of Hagen demonstrates his love for the dog when it turns out to be an especially good fighter.
It is, ultimately, a little tricky to know what to make of the film - it has its moments but it wobbles in what it's doing too often to awe us. Its balancing act, of that of a relationships drama between father and daughter and teenager and dog, is as good as it probably could have been without focussing solely on just the one strand and ignoring the other. What, for instance, happens to all the dogs once the events of the film have transpired? Additionally, I would doubt whether Lili's father would be a new-found convert to the blighters. Regardless, there is certainly something to be said about "White God".