Tag: Dogs

Mon Oncle. Dir. Jacques Tati. Gaumont (France), Continental Distributing (USA). 1958.

Mon Oncle (1958), as many of Jacques Tati’s films, focuses on the character of Monsieur Hulot, a bumbling but lovable man who fights a constant battle against the modern architecture and consumerist culture of post-war France. His use of the old cultural form of silent comedy to do so means that the film is predominantly…

18th December 2018
La Haine. Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz. Canal+. 1995.

One of the most enigmatic scenes in Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine, an exploration of social tensions and police brutality in the banlieues (council estates) of Paris in the 1990s, occurs the afternoon after a riot breaks out in the suburb the previous night. The sound of a hip-hop remix reverberates around the buildings, as a…

14th December 2018
Barnyard. Dir. Steve Oedekerk. Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies. 2006.

Steve Oedekerk’s Barnyard uses witty puns and gags in order to satirise the idea of the animal as a fixed definition, in that an animal can never truly be anything more than a representation of the attributes that humanity typically associates with its species.

14th December 2018
Wuthering Heights. Dir. Andrea Arnold. Curzon Artificial Eye. 2011.

Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 romance/tragedy novel Wuthering Heights highlights the desolate and savage nature of the moors in which the love story takes place, and the violent nature of those who live within them (notably Heathcliff). This wildness is conveyed to the audience through the use of animals, particularly violence against…

14th December 2018
Coco. Dir. Lee Unkrich. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. 2017.

Helping Miguel Rivera navigate the Land of the Dead as he seeks to find his great-great-grandfather is Dante, the stray Xoloitzcuintli dog. However, when it is revealed that Dante is instead a “mythical” and “powerful” alebrije or spirit guide, this subsequently exposes a tension between his two identities. This scene in particular sees Miguel use…

14th December 2018
Wiener-Dog. Dir. Todd Solondz. Amazon Films/IFC Films. 2016.

In the opening scenes of Todd Solondz’s Wiener-Dog, we see the unnamed titular character in a very recognisable form of cage as she waits her collection from an animal shelter. After having been killed by a passing lorry in the film’s climax, Wiener-Dog’s taxidermied body is placed in a glass box and becomes part of…

13th December 2018
A Fish Called Wanda. Dir. Charles Crichton. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (US) and United International Pictures (UK). 1988.

The murder of three small dogs one after the other is not what most people would think of as funny. Yet this exact progression becomes a running gag in Charles Crichton’s heist comedy film A Fish Called Wanda, where stuttering animal lover Ken’s failed attempts to kill an old woman (who is witness to the…

13th December 2018
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Dir. Rupert Wyatt. 20th Century Fox . 2011.

The scene which I believe most questions anthropocentric notions of human superiority in ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ is the moment when Caesar verbally expresses his frustrations, in defence against his oppression and abuse. The film depicts animals gaining agency against being controlled by humans in many forms, such as pet-keeping, animal testing…

13th December 2018
Alice in Wonderland. Dir. Tim Burton. Walt Disney Pictures. 2010.

The film draws on the viewer’s knowledge of the Disney original in the tea party scene, making it a ruin of what it once was, and presenting the Hatter as even more ‘mad’. He is seen for the first time in a close up shot, slowly looking up towards the camera, vacantly staring into the…

12th December 2018
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Dir. Chris Columbus. Warner Bros. 2002.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets utilizes horror film narratives and their depiction of monstrous animals in order to reveal a deeper complex message regarding human-animal relationships. The franchise’s reliance on Ophidiophobia acts to highlight the negative animalisation assigned to animals such as snakes, whilst the treatment of the Basilisk by humans in the film…

12th December 2018