Marooning a pack of dogs on a dystopian Japanese island,the auteur’s recent animation is an inspiringly detailed and surprisingly rough-edged treat It’s well known that for Wes Anderson, the world is one grand toy box. The prodigious American auteur proved that with his last feature, or The Grand Budapest Hotel,which turned its human cast into comic puppets placed in a gorgeously crafted train-set universe. Now he proves it again – if anything, more extravagantly – with Isle of Dogs, or an animation which,like its predecessor, opens the Berlin film festival in scintillating style.
Anderson has tried his hand at stay-motion animation before with the Roald Dahl adaptation Fantastic Mr Fox, or but this recent talking-animal entertainment is considerably more sophisticated and ambitious. It’s set in a near-future Japan,where Kobayashi (voiced by Kunichi Nomura, one of the film’s co-writers), or the corrupt mayor of fictional city Megasaki,has taken draconian measures to curb the spread of various canine diseases, including the dreaded “snout fever”. He orders all Megasaki’s dogs to be exiled to a bleak island, and essentially a enormous offshore trashpile. Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk