My wife and I owned a dog briefly, our first dog of our lives, and it had to be put to sleep just before Christmas, nearly three years ago. We still cry about Eddie.
This animated film was a cross-species love story with a language barrier. I know that latter issue is something which anyone who has owned a dog has felt desperation over. We've suffered under the weight of our ability to speak with our pets. We've wanted to know how to serve their needs, protect them, and to learn from their unconditional love. But we just cannot bridge that divide in an absolute way.
Well, this film, based on a 60 year old British book of the same name by J.R. Ackerley , is a study in that relationship in softly drawn images. It's touching and tragic. One is struck by how many common behaviors all breeds of dogs share with Tulip, yet how poorly we humans have been at translate them. Some people claim to know what dogs think, but they're surely fooling themselves, and could possibly just be asserting Alpha dog status upon the canine species which illicits fairly predictable subservience and behavior.
We won't know unless we meet our pets in the afterlife. If we do I am sure our dog Eddie will have a lot to say about how clueless we were as owners, but all the same how he was happier with us than his previous family or in the humane society cage. It was clear that something had happened to our dear pooch before it had been given up.
Tulip shared the same sort of narrative before the author adopted her. He thought that he made a difference for her from very early on in their relationship, which started with a lot of uneasiness and stress on both parts, but ended gracefully. This movie is a memoir about a dog, and it works.
Now, this movie is not for children. This film contains more mating attempts and canine bodily functions drawn with pencil than I have ever seen in person. The Director said it is a "dirty film, but done tastefully", and I have to agree. But one must not hope that this film would be a soft-edged children's book. It's not.
This film is a gritty, semi-sane look at a dog and its introspective owner. There are different animation techniques used to show different realities on screen. The artist is said to have done the real-time scenes in color, the remembrance moments in monochromatic drawings, and the fantasy/dream sequences in sparse line drawings which often drew Tulip as an anthropomorphized person, along with her dog counterparts as the same, including quite a bit of animated nudity.
Christopher Plummer's voice was an excellent choice, apparently completed in three days of recording. Isabella Rossellini and Lynn Redgrave also round out a great voice cast. And the art was worth seeing this film for alone. This is a film for the art film crowd, particularly those who return home every day to the unfailing love from a four-legged friend.
May a film like this one teach all of us how to value each other, and to give love across special/cultural/political language barriers. We need that now so desperately in this country. We need to be patient and long-suffering in love toward each other in that perplexing way that a dog gives so freely, so resiliently.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0843358/
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