Dogtooth

Boy,am I upset with the Sitges Film festival Jurors this year!!! So this film is not for everyone, but if you like realistic and paced films, are not bothered by highly explicit scenes, don't mind taboo subjects, like independent film and are into original stories.... this is the movie for you. I've read negative comments about this movie. I get it. It's not the most easy movie to watch, but I haven't been this pleasantly surprised in a long time. Saw this in Sitges with a packed audience, and I believe most of the people there were glued to the screen and didn't want to see the film end. Surreal, emotional, cruel, realistic and beautiful would be the words I would use to describe this picture. At first you don't really understand what's going on or where you're at, but soon find yourself submerged in the sad and pathetic life of a disturbed family. This is definitely one of the most important indie films of the year; aside from the original and highly meaningful story, the film if impeccably made with astounding performances. Shame on the Sitges film festival! This movie deserved the best actress and the special critics award. And I say that on behalf of most of the other people who were at the festival.

A whole language of deceit is created by a father to make sure that his family don't venture into the unknown which he fears will corrupt them. This film talks about the myths and lies we are told to maintain status quo and the appearance of stability and normality. It explores the abuse of protecting a child from outside influences to the extreme of denying human instincts and inquisitiveness about their world. Its shows how telling children lies for their own safety makes them fearful of the world and patronises there innate understanding about life. Its amazing because it creates a world with an absurd, fully realised, vocabulary that is completely understood by the members of this family ; its surreal nature forces you to question the oddness and the parameters of your own existence. A life unquestioned and unexplored leads to a stagnant swamp of confusion.

For me, this guy's movies are hit & misses......mostly misses, if I'm being honest. I think the reason I continue to watch them is because I feel it lets me peek into how someone insane behaves in real life.

This particular movie is amongst the worst and it irritated me that I watched it until the end. But it's one of those things where you want to hang in there hoping it gets better or starts making sense at some point (it doesn't).

The concept was good - the execution: not so much. He continues with his normal dead pan characters (which are becoming quite boring) and tediously plays along the edges of the grotesque; seemingly for effect I'm assuming.

I will still watch Poor Things, but with reservation and some wonder as to why I keep subjecting myself to this man's work.

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.

Good camerawork and visual style don't make up for getting too many different themes like growing up and influences of belief mixed and muddled up. It is hard to pin down what exactly the writers were trying to say here. On the other side we have a too slow pacing from start to finish and almost a non ending.

Rating: D