Heart of a Dog

I am a Laurie Anderson fan. I have been since her album "Big Science" was released in 1982. I remember listening to "Walking and Falling" over and over on my SONY Walkman as I walked many paths and feeling like she really got it, whatever it was. I continued to follow her, through her release of "Home of the Brave" in 1986 and saw her perform live at the Zellerbach Hall in the 90s. Her marriage to Lou Reed seemed so perfect. So, when I heard she made a movie, I had to check it out. As I left the theater, I could only ask myself, "Why did it take so long?"

"Heart of a Dog" is a beautiful tribute to life, love, and the fleeting nature of time. It is everything you would expect from a Laurie Anderson movie and then some. It is not a documentary, it is a cinematic essay on loss and love and death and remembrance. It is poetry on film. Laurie Anderson is, in my mind, first and foremost a poet. She has been graced with an understanding of the power of language, not only in the actual chosen words, but in the cadence of their delivery. The influence of Burroughs is obvious. In "Heart of a Dog", she translates that poetry to imagery, mixing home movies, weird distorted images barely recognizable, to straight up film moments, it all comes together as the ultimate Laurie Anderson expression.

If you are not a fan, this may not be the film for you, or it may be a gateway into the mind of a creative genius. It is not so much a film as a stream of consciousness visual essay. If you are a fan, then make all haste to see this film. It is everything you can imagine a Laurie Anderson film to be.

"Heart of a Dog" (2015 release; 75 min.) is a non-fiction movie by musician/performance artist Laurie Anderson. As the movie opens, we see a cartoon-animated Laurie Anderson inform us that "this is my dream body" and that in her dream she gives birth to an adult dog whom she calls Lolabelle. It's not long before Laurie starts reflecting on her dying mother, 9/11, SIDS, and a bunch of other things.

Couple of comments: Laurie Anderson, best known for her minimalist music such as "O Superman" from the early 80s, is no stranger to movie making. Here she takes two particular tough periods in her life, the decline and death of her rat terrier Lolabelle and the decline and death of her mother, to weave a collage of images and montage of sound, supplemented by Laurie's spoken words in which she explores "the connection between love and death" (Laurie's words) and everything in between. One might call it a stream of consciousness, except that Laurie is not rambling in the least. Let me tell you. it makes for one amazing movie experience. It's like being in a dream. if not a trance, where things somehow become a lot clearer. Let me also mention that I was vaguely aware of the movie, along the lines of: "that's the documentary about Laurie's dog", and I almost did not watch the movie for that reason. As it turns out, the movie devotes only about 10-15 min. to the dog, and the movie is not even a documentary. So it was a complete misconception on my part what this movie was about (and to be honest, the movie's title only reinforced that misconception). Last but not least, Laurie's husband Lou Reed (who passed away in 2013) isn't mentioned a single time, but an excellent song of his, "Turning Time Around", does play over the movie's end titles. Please note: you don't have to be a fan of Laurie Anderson to appreciate this movie (but it certainly doesn't hurt if you are).

"Heart of a Dog" showed up out of the blue and without any pre-release buzz or advertising at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati last weekend. The early evening screening when I saw it a few days ago was not attended well (three people, including myself), and I noticed that it will drop out of the theater after today. That's a shame, as this is a remarkable movie in many respects, and by all means deserves a wider audience. If you are in the mood for something very different, all the while realizing that is a deeply personal essay and film from Laurie Anderson, I encourage you to check it out, be it in the theater, on VOD or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray. "Heart of a Dog" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

I had to watch this a few times to get everything I could out of it. I will tell you if you are expecting some kind of tribute to Ms. Anderson's dog in the vein of "Marley and Me", then you are going to be very disappointed. Instead Ms. Anderson weaves in stories about her dog, her Buddhist beliefs, her past back to her childhood, and the growth of the surveillance state into one very interesting piece. At the point where her dog, rat terrier Lolabelle, dies, the dog exits the narrative.

The opening pretty much gives you an idea of how avant-garde things are going to get, because it is about a dream she has where she has her dog sewn into her stomach by surgeons so that she can give birth to her. There are fun things that anybody could enjoy such as dogs wearing sandals - apparently this is a "thing" in Asia, and how Lolabelle went blind in her old age, and afterwards Ms. Anderson put some keyboards on the floor so the dog could "learn to play". The terrier actually got pretty good at "playing". Lolabelle actually did charity performances and even a Christmas album! I guess the one thing I really noticed is how Ms. Anderson is so unquestioning of her Buddhist beliefs and teachers. Case in point -when her dog got to the end of life and was in pain, the vets were recommending euthanasia. Ms. Anderson consults a Buddhist teacher who said that death is a process and you have no right to interfere with that process with either humans or animals. So unquestioning of that unconventional path, she took Lolabelle home from the vets - I'm hoping with tranquilizers and pain killers for her - and let her die on the living room floor in her regular dog bed.

Is this just a "thing" Americans have? (I'm American by the way) Whatever spiritual advice they are given by their chosen religion they follow it, regardless of common sense or compassion? I guess the fact that the piece raised questions with me is a good thing. I will say the visuals are very well done and Ms. Anderson has a calm and soothing voice. Not for everybody, but I would give it a chance. In fact, you'll probably have to give it several chances to get it.

Now Laurie Anderson isn't really a musician, she is an artist using all kinds of modern media and her concerts are more impressive than her audio CDs. I wasn't really sure what to expect of this film and fortunately it isn't as artsy as many of the works of video artists often are are, where - as usually in modern art - you have to make sense of the material yourself, somehow; no, this is a very watchable film with Laurie spreading out memories and thoughts about her rat terrier Archie and her mother, both of which have passed away rather recently. Also of course, her husband, the rock musician Lou Reed, had died only 2 years ago so the topic of death seems a very natural one in those circumstances. Still, this is not a sad or bitter film but at best maybe a melancholic but often also a happy one with an emphasis on cheerful memories. It is a meditation on life and death spoken in her very soft singsong voice.

Heart of a Dog, a movie by Laurie Anderson is one of the most nourishing movies I have seen in a long while. I loved her drawings, the abstract and nostalgic imagery and mostly her storytelling voice. The film content - love, memory and mostly loss - filled a personal need for intensity that only few other art works, books, and movies, have been able to do. At times my emotions could barely stand absorbing what I could only call its beauty. Laurie should have just been a story teller, all the other trickery she has used through time distract from the real source of her art. Of course if the viewer expect a story about dogs, this is not the movie for them, but I can list HoaD to very few other movies that seem to be about nothing and they are about everything.