Dogtooth

Not a lot of movies shock me. So I was quite surprised the unsettling impact Dogtooth had on me. A father locks up his 3 children who are in their late teens - early twenties in a large house and they have stayed there all their lives.

The three children are told lies of various degrees. Living totally isolated from the world and in a manufactured universe, they do not react like normal people would. The lack of awareness and exposure makes for very interesting scenarios and reactions.

The film can be pondered upon on several levels. For instance, governments never really tell their people any thing close to the whole truth. Thoughts on these lines - the harms caused by leaving people in the dark are the obvious things one can take back from the movie.

I am very interested in the alternate viewpoint of the parents though. They genuinely thought exposing the children to the world would be harmful for them. While that is not some thing one can possibly agree with, there are some positives which do come out of it in my opinion. For instance, when one of the girls who has never having been exposed to popular culture, dances, she creates some thing unique. As she has not seen any thing before, she is not influences by any thing and creates her own style. That is a positive in my mind.

This is film which is close to a masterpiece. When the film had released, it was panned in The New York Times and received an average review from Roger Ebert. I am quite pleased then, that it is slowly getting appreciation and is ending up in a few best of the year lists as well. This is a must watch according to me. 8.5/10.

I was expecting some kind of "The Village" film... Just to avoid spoiling.. The lights turned on, the credits were running and everyone was quiet and searching for answers in others looks. Its best surprise that I've got in years. You don't have to be special to watch it, just sit and you'll end it living it, even that it isn't your life. I appreciate latter how good the movie was when I realized that all the scenes didn't need background violins to drive your emotions to a certain field. Everything goes by itself naturally. I just registered to post this, as I couldn't believe those bad reviews. I'm a normal guy that doesn't read reviews, but this movie is different and I was curious about how would other people feel about it. Maybe its one of those that you just love or hate, but at the end you'll feel something that isn't indifference.

If you are easily offended by bold unusual film-making especially in the areas of sex and violence do not see this film. That said I just saw this at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and thought it was a very interesting and very brave film. Well worth seeing if you can like strong, unusual films. Probably close to 30% of the audience walked out, but I was encouraged by the 70+% that remained, especially since most of the audience were 60+ Americans. The 20-somethings I talked to on the way out were very enthusiastic. The woman sitting next to me said "What did it mean? I don't understand" but to me there were enough deep meanings and points to ponder on a 30-minute drive home and I can't wait to tell friends about it. Everything from the dangers of creating a "perfect family" to "the mechanization of capitalism and upper middle class life" to metaphors for the dangers of repressive families and governments. At it's simplest, it proves that people, especially young ones, are in so many ways what their parents make them. This is not a film you will forget!

I give up. After sitting in front of the computer for almost half an hour, tossing and turning thoughts in my head as I try to write something about my latest adventure at the Auckland International Film Festival – "Dogtooth", I've decided that it is not possible to do so.

What I will say is this: watching "Dogtooth" was one of the strangest experiences I've ever had. I have honestly never seen any other film like it. Sometimes hysterical, sometimes shockingly intense. It is a hypnotic trip that displays brilliant originality and borderlines pure insanity. In my humble opinion, it is a film that should be watched by every single person, for the experience alone. Sadly, like so many other gems, I'm almost certain that this film will never find a wide release, so, please do seek it out, I beg you all.

I am so glad that I watched the movie cold, as the only things I knew about the movie was a promotional photo and the fact that it's Greek, a decision that I believe made the experience even more powerful for me, and a decision that I advise you all to take.

I must confess that I didn't understand 'Dogtooth', a film that has been billed in some quarters as a "satire"; but I fail to see what it is supposed to be satirising. A couple raise their children in isolation from society, and feed them a diet of false facts about the world; in apparent accordance with their parents' desires, the children grow up with a highly unusual set of behaviours, morals and perceptions. The false picture painted by the parents is frankly bizarre, but their offspring have no external knowledge by which to judge it. But I never got any sense of what motivates the parents to behave themselves in such a strange manner, and they seem to live a similar, fairly joyless existence to their kids. Presumably this film is meant to be about something; but to me, it just felt like a pointless oddity.