BLACK DOG
(Check out Kim Voynar’s Black Dog movie review, in theaters now. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
“Black Dog,” the latest film by director Guan Hu (The Eight Hundred, The Sacrifice), opens moodily with a languid shot panning across the Gobi Desert in northwest China – all bleached-out, desaturated browns and endless, muted green-blue sky. The serenity of the desert is broken by the distant sound of a dilapidated bus kicking up road dust as it trudges along a remote road until unexpectedly, a pack of wild dogs swarm the bus, causing the driver to flip the crowded vehicle.
The passengers scramble out, among them Lang (Eddie Peng, in a moving, mostly silent performance), newly released from prison and on his way home to the small town where he was once a celebrity, to pick up the pieces of his life and try to start anew.
Lang’s hometown in the desert is in the midst of a sea change, caught in a wave of massive growth, social change and development that has left the once-prosperous town on the brink of extinction. Lang’s father, once a local big shot, is living next to the crumbling town zoo, drinking his life and sorrows away and caring for the zoo’s animals, who live out their lives in sad metal cages. Packs of stray dogs are everywhere and overrunning the town, so Lang picks up a job on the stray dog patrol to make ends meet, thanks to the team lead Uncle Yao (played by director Jia Zhangke). It’s a far cry from Lang’s glory days as a stunt motorcyclist and musician, but in his current position he has to take what he can get.
Outside of work, Lang has to deal with neighbors who don’t welcome his return, among them the local snake farmer whose nephew’s death resulted in Lang being sent to prison. Lang may be free of prison now, but he’s still shackled by society and by himself, and the town he’s come home to is falling apart and on its way to being obsolete.
In his work rounding up strays Lang encounters a thin black dog, and Lang finds himself inexplicably drawn to the scrappy, fast canine, who proves harder than most of the dogs to catch. Through his unlikely relationship with a lonely dog no one loves or wants, Lang finds a connection to tie to as he struggles to find his footing in a world that no longer feels familiar or welcoming. There’s also a brief dalliance with Grape (Tong Liya), a traveling circus performer, but it’s Lang’s emotional connection to the dog that drives the film and gives it its emotional weight.
Lang is grieving the life he knows he can never have again, trapped on a path he can see no way out of. Like the Gobi Desert and the town around him fading away, his future feels bleak and lonely, and Peng’s performance conveys magnitudes of restrained emotion through the smallest tics of facial expression, the bleakness of his gaze, the slump of his shoulders, and the expressiveness of his connection to his canine co-star, whose supporting performance is also worthy of note.
The film, which won the coveted Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, centers on redemption, an idea that’s been explored through countless films. Guan takes the familiar, snags us from those stark opening frames, and keeps us deeply engaged as he guides this fable of a man and a dog through despair, hope, grief and dreamlike magical realism. The cinematography by DP Gao Weizhe is fantastic and sets the emotional tone of hope in the face of hopelessness, from the expansive shots of the desert and town, to warm, close moments of quiet tenderness between Lang and his furry friend.
Black Dog is an absolutely gorgeous, deeply moving film with a beautiful soul, relatable to anyone who’s ever felt trapped, alone and friendless in a bleak and unwelcoming world.
– Kim Voynar
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