Dogtooth

Posted by abby on February 27, 2011

“Dogtooth” (one of the nominees for this year’s Academy Award for best foreign film) is a weird little piece of world cinema, the likes of which appear only once in a very great while. It’s a beautifully shot, violent, shocking and absurd movie that owes fealty in equal measures to Michael Haneke and Luis Bunuel and Marcel Duchamp, with a touch of Jan Svankmajer thrown in for good measure. I know all those highfalutin comparisons make it sound like a heavy, dull movie, but it’s not. It’s just…unique.

The film lets us into the lives of a Greek family comprised of a father, mother, son and two daughters, who live in an isolated compound somewhere in the countryside. The father is the only one who leaves the house, driving to and from his work in the city. The only outsider who comes in is Christina, a security guard at the father’s office who’s brought in a couple of times a week to attend to the son’s sexual needs. The three unnamed children, all on the verge of adulthood, are raised with the strangest home schooling curriculum known to man. They listen to vocabulary tapes that spout misinformation (a “sea,” for example, is defined as a large leather chair), memorize anatomy books, and have daily workouts and games postured as contests to win “prizes” (stickers) that allow them special privileges.

Even stranger are the descriptions the father gives them about the outside world. The kids can never go out into the garden by themselves, or leave the walls of the compound, because cats might attack them—cats are evil. A child is ready to leave the home when their dogtooth (canine) falls out. They are ready to learn to drive when that tooth grows back.

It takes a while to get past the initial bizarre setup and figure out what writer and director Giorgos Lanthimos is up to here. But once the realization kicks in, “Dogtooth” becomes a smart, blackly funny satirical allegory about totalitarian rule. Think Franco’s Spain, China during the Cultural Revolution, or present-day North Korea. The father trains his family to bark like dogs, only allows them to watch family home movies for entertainment, and plays Frank Sinatra records at dinner, translating the lyrics out loud into messages that sound like they were copied directly from the Little Red Book.

There are plenty of places to get hung up on in this movie—it contains uncomfortable depictions of sex and incest, as well as bluntly graphic violence. But it’s all done with an interesting purpose in mind. Lanthimos sets out to depict an extreme example of totalitarianism, and the reactions that kind of strict leadership elicits from people, and he not only succeeds, but does so on an artistic scale that only a select few directors have achieved. I think Lanthimos probably needs to develop his artistic voice a little more (there are a great many parts of “Dogtooth” that feel pretty obvious and juvenile), but I have a feeling he’s going to be an interesting person to watch. This is his third film, and the only one that’s gotten any kind of international recognition. After the buzz from “Dogtooth,” I’m certain we’ll be hearing more from him.

The Verdict:

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