White God

"Don't be afraid, they're just a bunch of dogs." Man at a club.

Well it's not the surrealistic Cujo with its rabid St. Bernard or the benign Benji. White Dog, rather, feels like a realistic horror film, at least till the closing when it does get surreal. Indeed, these mutts are not "just a bunch." They loosely represent the abused and subjugated underclass of the world, and you guessed it, they revolt like apes from that infamous planet or workers from Metropolis.

Until that fantasy ending, where the dogs are let loose to wreak havoc, the story is an effectively scary progression of the dog Max's descent into rabid madness through various masters, the last of whom teaches him how to kill for dog fights. Young Lili (Zsofia Psotta) befriends Max as a stray until she's forced to let him go—on to his bloody career. Lili's struggles to keep the dog put her in opposition to her father, Daniel (Sandor Zsoter),and most authoritarian situations like playing in an orchestra under a controlling maestro.

As the drama slowly exposes (think about Hitchcock's measured exposition in The Birds) the constant abuse stray dogs are accustomed to, it parallels Lili's battle with a clueless father and abusive dog catchers, who sometimes resemble Ghostbusters in their uniforms and bungling dog chases. In either case, dog or girl, adults are usually clueless about the suffering they inflict on their dogs and children.

Like the poor French of their Revolution, the downtrodden and dogs will have their day. Today's increasing gap between the rich and poor or the brutality of Mid-Eastern ISIS persecutions can serve as the objects of writer/director Kornal Mundruczo's figurative story. For those not interested in English-major deconstructions, White God (the title may be homage to Sam Fuller's White Dog) is a fine horror story about the voiceless downtrodden rising up against their oppressors.

No matter which side you're on, it's a disturbing tale, bloody and depressing, elevated to artistic worthiness by an uncanny fusion of the real and the surreal.

White God 9/10 - This is a wonderful movie that plays as a parable about separatism and Hungarian politics during democratic rule. On the surface however lays an entertaining revenge flick against animal cruelty and a drama about the love of an animal towards it's human "the White God". The director uses a mish mash of genre's to keep the audience on it's toes, while paying homage to everything from Fuller's White Dog, to Hitchcock's Birds. The best part of the film was that they hired hundreds of shelter dogs and spent months training them, and after the film, the director and crew worked hard to get every dog adopted! These dogs are some of the best actors I have ever seen. This is a marvelous yet challenging film.

Do you like dogs? Well, there are a lot of them. A story that is sort of allegorical in that the dogs' behavior, which was instilled by their masters (White Gods), is turned against these gods as the dogs become like humans - capable of loyalty, devotion, but also of hate, rage, killing.

I thought some of the roles (dogs or humans) were a little too over-the-top not believable to get emotionally involved. We have bad - parents, merchants, musical conductor, animal control specialists, dog trainers. As for the dogs, although well trained, seemed too well trained.

Storyline is simple. We have a girl, independent beyond her age, roaming the streets at night searching for her lost dog. She finds her dog, but it has changed for the worse. Can it be saved?

Lili is eleven years old and has a beloved dog – Hagen. Her parents are split up and when her mother has to go for a 3 month jolly with work to Australia – she has to stay with pops. Only he lives in an apartment where mutts are verboten. All cross breeds are seen as inferior to pure breeds in Hungary.

Despite her best efforts Hagen ends up on the mean streets of Budapest and she, in her innocent way, sets out to find him. Now that is the very simple synopsis for what is a film with so much more to offer. This is a cast of thousands – of dogs that is. All of the mixed breed dogs were untrained and rescued from shelters. The performances are stunning. There are scenes of animal butchery and animal cruelty – so if that will offend then this may not be for you.

It is also a parable about how one species dominates another in the belief it is the superior – and we all know that in parables pride leads to a fall.

This is also shot beautifully in a beautiful city with stunning realism and an eye for the impact that such a powerful story can make. Official entry fro the Academy Awards for best foreign language film 2015 and winner of Un Certain Regard prize at the 2014 Canes Film Festival – this is amazing, original, stunning and highly entertaining cinema.

The opening and closing shots of White God are beautiful and powerful realizations of Director Kornél Mundruczó's allegorical horror/thriller vision. Unfortunately, much of the movie does not meet this lofty ideal.

White God tells the story of Lili who is forced by her hard-hearted father to leave her dog, Hagen, on the streets to fend for himself. As Hagen falls into a cycle of abuse and abandonment, Lili becomes more independent and forgets about him. Hagen retaliates against his human oppressors by leading his fellow shelter-dogs in an apocalyptic revolution.

Let's get one thing out of the way first: the fact that this movie was shot entirely with real dogs and practical effects is simply masterful. The angry canine horde is the most terrifying group of animals since The Birds, but Mundruczó works very hard to keep the audience sympathetic towards them. Animal Trainer Teresa Ann Miller deserves some sort of award for convincingly training over 200 dogs to convey such a wide breadth of emotion. Although I cringed seeing scenes of abuse and dog-fighting, "they were always happy, and just playing," said Mundruczó to Fangoria magazine.

Unfortunately, the acting of the dogs is by far the best acting in the movie. The actress who plays Lili does this annoying pursed-lip thing that will make you want to smack her through the screen. Lili's father remains a contemptible a** to the very end. Even the evil dog trainer, despite having the most well-scripted character, couldn't be more two-dimensional if he had a mustache to twirl.

To make matters worse, the only parts of the movie that are any good are those with Hagen. Lili's story is droll beyond belief and just feels like a distraction from Hagen. I wish that I could have read this movie as an allegory about man's abuse of animals or as a metaphor for how easily the middle class forget about the poor. Unfortunately, the tediousness of Lili's story, which was obviously written in after Hagen's, kept distracting me from the movie's emotional and philosophical core. When the movie should have been showing similarities between Lili and Hagen, it often simply drove their stories further apart.

Now, don't get me wrong, this was definitely a "good" movie. I would consider it required viewing for fans of horror and suspense. As a dog-lover, Hagen's story really hit the emotional nail on the head. Mundruczó's ambitious vision is, in itself, highly commendable. It is unfortunate that a few poor directorial choices kept this movie from becoming the masterpiece it deserved to be.

Maybe an American remake will fix some of these problems? Probably not...