‘Isle of Dogs’ Fully Deserving of Puppy Snaps

Once upon a time, free dogs roamed Japan before “a procession of dog-hating thugs” of the Kobayashi Dynasty begot modern-day powerless house pets. In Wes Anderson’s new film, “Isle of Dogs,” Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura), a villain sprung from the pages of a comic book, embraces the demagoguery that is his namesake with an extermination program that involves wasabi-poison and robo-dogs. With a star-studded cast voicing the band of rag-tag abandoned dogs around which the plot circles, Anderson imagines their epic with a gravity and generosity of spirit that all canines deserve. He bestows them with fine, scruffy fur and glassy eyes that bulge with a characteristically canine, reliably heartrending sincerity, and enlivens them through stop-motion animation. In the fictional Megasaki, Kobayashi banishes all dogs to the nearby Trash Island. His ward and distant nephew, 12-year-old Atari (Koyu Rankin), flies to Trash Island in search of his best friend and guard dog, Spots. What ensues is no gallivanting adventure, but a crusade against impending genocide. While Anderson indulges many touching expositions of canine character, he deals too summarily with Kobayashi’s sudden character reversal, which conveniently catalyzes a flurry of heroic displays for the story’s tidy resolution. Despite the film’s redemptive magical marvels, Anderson falters in a minor oversight: By portraying Mayor Kobayashi as so unambiguously diabolical, his character reversal, precipitated in a single pivotal moment, becomes a bewildering plot device.

The parchment on which the tale blossoms crackles with plenty of charming, on-the-nose jokes. Mayor Kobayashi sports a huge, florid tattoo of a cat on his back. Despite speaking in Japanese without English subtitles, Atari’s fearless and adamant kindness toward his canine allies translates easily into emotional maturity and silent strength, and he later delivers an affective haiku with a hilariously bewildering final line: “Whatever happened / To man’s best friend / Falling spring blossom.” One dog balks at his derelict Trash Island environs and declares, “I’m depressing.” Canine thoughts betray a treasure trove of literal jokes and misinterpretations and pointedly humanlike assumptions of self-importance. Chief (Bryan Cranston), the only stray of the central pack, is bitterly cagey, but only from lack of affection. When Atari prods Chief to fetch, Chief qualifies his submission: “I’m doing it because I feel sorry for you.” Chief wistfully tells Nutmeg (Scarlett Johansson), an elfin show-dog with perfectly fluffy caramel fur, “You belong somewhere. You have papers.” Oracle (Tilda Swinton), a gossipy pug, watches TV and interprets the news for others, hence her prescient “visions.”

The devious machinations of humankind seem even more dastardly from the canine perspective, but even the dogs are thwarted by prejudice. The indoor dogs cow at rumors of savage dogs that roam the island, unhinged and cannibalistic. They later encounter this menagerie of earnest, scar-speckled, neon-colored outcasts, and Anderson’s tenderness and diligent attunement to the true innocence of canine nature manifests especially in how the maimed dogs express their trauma through spontaneous tears.

In Anderson’s world, unadulterated youthful passion allied with the unshakable loyalty of dogs trump hatred in an obvious but nonetheless powerful allegorical clash of good and bad. Chief and his canine cohorts are exemplary democratic citizens, staging group-votes on all decisions they make, and their goofy but enterprising camaraderie shames the hordes of Kobayashi proponents who are blinded by group-think. Kobayashi’s commandeering of the media and stentorian declarations seem like rhetorical strategies borrowed from a modern, orange demagogue. But in making Kobayashi a muted incarnation of nefarious monomaniacs of a distant but sordid past, and not one who acts out of any suggested insecurity or personal trauma but out of inherent, vicious prejudice, Kobayashi unquestionably invites vitriol. Anderson limns Kobayashi in rigid, two-dimensional strokes. In the interest of keeping spoilers to a minimum—and to curtail self-indulgent quibbling about an otherwise magical feat of a film—someone so unilaterally evil wouldn’t believably be so receptive to Atari’s emotional appeals.

Aesthetically, the film is a wondrous fantasia of art. A narrator (Courtney Vance) recounts the epic in stages as furious drumming by sumo wrestlers provide dramatic transitions, and the film announces itself through intertitles and side commentary (read captions quickly to catch them all) that intimate Anderson’s ecstatically playful visual style and daffy humor. It’s a film about the theatrics of translation: “All barks have been rendered into English.” Sprawling, gloriously illustrated tableaus of Japanese landscapes recall woodblock prints and switch out of scenes like theatrical murals. Anderson’s shifts between from 2D silhouettes that resemble shadow-puppets to startlingly material 3D figurines add a frenetic and dramatic flair to the epic. Despite a forgivably practical plot gimmick, this is a tale that all creatures will want to tell (dogs were cordially invited to some screenings), in whatever language they see fit.