The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, April 9, 2018 — 6A

Anderson wins best in 
show with ‘Isle of Dogs’ 

Few modern directors have 

a cinematic style as unique, 
idiosyncratic and identifiable 
as that of Wes Anderson (“The 
Grand Budapest Hotel”). It’s for 
this reason that the director’s 
name is so frequently used as 
an adjective, with each new film 
hailed as the most 
“Wes 
Anderson” 

Wes Anderson film 
yet, and inspecting 
his 
filmography, 

it’s not hard to 
see why. In each 
of his films, the 
audience explores 
a wide array of 
gorgeously crafted, 
meticulously 
detailed settings, 
almost always carrying with 
them 
a 
distinctly 
vintage 

feel. From the purposefully 
baroque “The Grand Budapest 
Hotel” to the wistful “Moonrise 
Kingdom,” all of Anderson’s 
films seem to carry with them 
echoes of the past, like a story 
about some long-gone relative 
passed down by one’s parents. 
Anderson has seemed, to many, 
to be unwaveringly true to a 
singular artistic vision.

However, with the addition of 

his latest release, “Isle of Dogs,” 
it seems that old dogs truly can 
learn new tricks. Set in the near 
future, the film tells the story 
of Atari (Koyu 
Rankin, 
“Juken”), 

a young boy separated from 
his dog Spots (Liev Schreiber, 
“Ray Donovan”) when Mayor 
Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura, 
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”) of 
Megasaki City decrees that all 
dogs must be banished to Trash 
Island, a desolate, rat-infested 
pile of garbage off the coast of 
mainland Japan. Leaving the 
city 
behind, 
Atari 
comes 
to 
Trash 

Island hoping to reunite with 
his furry companion. The film’s 
futuristic landscape, infused 
with homages to Japanese 
culture, is a complete departure 
from anything Anderson has 
done before. Gone are the 
picturesque hotels in the Alps 
and the quaint New-England 
summer camps. Trash Island, 

where the majority of the film 
is set, is disgusting. Infested 
with rats and barely vegetated, 
the film’s color palette consists 
predominantly of reds, greys 
and blacks. The world of “Isle 
of Dogs” is one overrun with 
mankind’s greed, corruption 
and apathy. It should serve, 
then, as the ultimate proof 
of Anderson’s ability that he 
still manages to make this film 

beautiful.

That 
very 

juxtaposition 
of 
beauty 
and 

sadness is part of 
what makes all of 
Anderson’s films 
so 
enthralling. 

Where “Isle of 
Dogs” sets itself 
apart, however, is 
the scope. Many 
of 
Anderson’s 

characters have dealt with 
immense personal pains, such 
as the grieving brothers from 
“The Darjeeling Limited,” but 
rarely 
are 
these 
struggles 

extrapolated into the context 
of larger social systems. “Isle 
of Dogs” features its share of 
touching personal struggles, 
but at its core is a film that 
laments 
mankind’s 
cruelty 
while 

simultaneously celebrating its 
capacity for good. It examines 
the personal struggles of people 
(and dogs) caught up in large, 
amoral systems. It’s poignant 
commentary, and one can’t help 
but see vestiges of Megasaki 
realized in our own society, one 
increasingly plagued by greed, 
pollution and xenophobia. 

Captured via stop-motion 

animation — Anderson’s second 
full venture in the medium 
following 
2009’s 
“Fantastic 

Mr. Fox” — with a splash of 
traditional 2D animation, the 
film is an absolute labor of love 
from the first frame to the end 
credits. It’s such an impressive 
testament 
to 
Anderson’s 

ongoing desire to grow as a 
filmmaker, and is evident in 
the pure ingenuity that goes 
into every scene. He never 
cuts corners, often introducing 
breathtakingly 
intricate 

backgrounds and settings only 
to use them for a single scene, 
sometimes as brief as a few 

seconds. It’s not all set pieces 
either; the film’s characters are 
all animated in such immense 
detail. The way Anderson has 
animated 
watering, 
tearful 

eyes in the film is particularly 
impressive and is sure to evoke 
some sniffles from the audience. 

Anderson begins the film 

with a disclaimer informing the 
audience that all characters will 
speak in their native languages, 
and that “All barks have been 
rendered into English.” That 
is to say, the film’s Japanese 
characters will go unsubtitled. 
It’s a curious decision to make, 
and one that’s stirred some 
controversy, with Anderson’s 
harshest critics calling it a way 
to silence Japanese people in 
a film that borrows so heavily 
from their culture. Supporters 
of Anderson, meanwhile, call 
it nothing more than a unique 
design choice for the film, and 
cite the expansive list of notable 
Japanese talents involved in the 
film, including voice cameos 
from Ken Watanabe (“Rage”), 
Yojiro Noda (lead singer of 
the popular Japanese band 
Radwimps) and Yoko Ono. The 
film feels almost like a sort of 
cultural mishmash, blending a 
plethora of artistic and cultural 
influences and perspectives. 
Audiences will have to decide 
for themselves if this blending 
more closely resembles cross-
pollination or bastardization. 

A technical marvel and a clear 

labor of love, “Isle of Dogs” is a 
worthy installment in the ever-
growing Wes Anderson canon. 
The film challenges our notions 
of mainstream animated feature 
films, which have been hard-
pressed to gain recognition as 
anything more than children’s 
movies. Significantly darker 
than “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which 
was marketed as a family movie, 
“Isle of Dogs” has a lot to show 
its audience, and never feels 
simplified or euphemistic. You 
wouldn’t expect it from an 
outlandish film about animated 
dogs, but “Isle of Dogs” may 
be one of Anderson’s most 
impressive 
and 
poignant 

offerings to date. The director 
continues to cement himself as 
a prolific auteur who, after 20 
years, still hasn’t peaked. 

MAX MICHALSKY

Daily Arts Writer

FOX SEARCHLIGHT

“Isle of Dogs”

State Theater

Fox Searchlight 

Pictures

FILM REVIEW

Few works of art can sustain 

an audience’s focus for three 
and a half hours. It’s hard to ask 
people to walk into the theater 
at 7:30 p.m. on a Thursday and 
leave at 11:00 p.m.

Yet, the School of Music, 

Theatre 
& 
Dance’s 
recent 

production of Tony Kushner’s 
“Angels in America Part I: 
Millennium 
Approaches” 

managed to do this and more. 
It was a captivating story of gay 
life in the ’80s in Manhattan, 
and while many of the cultural 
references were dated, the 
meaning and significance of 
the work remain relevant in the 
current cultural and political 
climate.

The play focuses on three 

groups of characters and the 
interactions between them. 
First is Louis Ironson and his 
AIDS-stricken 
lover 
Prior 
Walter. 

As Prior’s sickness progresses, 
Louis struggles to cope. Next is 
Mormon law clerk Joe Pitt and 

his anxious, pill-addicted wife 
Harper Pitt. The Pitts’ struggle 
to understand Joe’s closeted 
gay 
identity, 
especially 
in 

regard to their strict religious 
beliefs. Lastly, the story follows 
closeted lawyer Roy Cohn as 
he faces threats of disbarment 
from the New York Bar, a 
character who is loosely based 
on the historical figure. Cohn 
also faces a sudden diagnosis 
with AIDS and a perpetual 
denial of the disease that he 
faces.

Though the subject matter 

is incredibly serious, the play 
contains many brief moments 
of humor. They form a bulwark 
against 
the 
dark 
subject 

matter as a whole, allowing the 
audience to laugh at moments 
when tears might be more 
appropriate. 
At 
one 
point 

during Prior’s hospitalization 
scene, I found myself laughing 
as a defense mechanism against 
the terrible anguish that I knew 
the characters on stage must 
have been facing.

Despite my great attempts, 

it also became hard to separate 
the current political overtones 
surrounding the play from the 
play itself. Cohn, after all, was an 
early mentor for Donald Trump. 

Trump learned his strategy 
of aggressive litigation from 
Cohn during his legal spat with 
the Justice Department over 
alleged fair housing violations 
in his New York properties. It 
was easy to see echoes of Trump 

in Cohn and Cohn in Trump. At 
one point, Cohn is visited by the 
ghost of Ethel Rosenberg; the 
aggressive, heartless nature of 
legal legacy was exposed to the 
audience in his recollections 
of successfully prosecuting the 
ghost.

As a relic of the ’80s, the 

play serves as a reminder 
of the negative side of the 

Reagan years. The closeted 
nature of gay life in the ’80s, 
for example, is hard to fully 
contemplate in relation to our 
increasingly accepting society. 
The fears of the AIDS epidemic 
and the allegedly indifferent 
government response to it also 
feature prominently into the 

play’s overall plot. 

At its core, however, the 

play is about the morally and 
ethically 
bankrupt 
makeup 

of American society. As Louis 
proclaims in act three, “There 
are no angels in America, no 
spiritual past, no racial past, 
there’s only the political.” 
America, Kushner argues, is an 
ever-changing power struggle 
between various groups and 
individuals. It lacks a central 
theme or overarching purpose.

The play ends with Prior 

being visited by an angel. As 
Prior recoils in awe and terror, 
the angel proclaims that Prior 
is a prophet and that the “Great 
Work begins.” While the staging 
throughout 
the 
production 

had been minimal and bare, it 
was this image of a suspended 
angel flapping two floor-to-
ceiling wings over the bed of 
the terrified Prior that stuck 
with me as I left the theater. 
It was stunningly beautiful, 
and despite the three hours 
that I had already spent in the 
theater, I felt myself wishing for 
more.

The 
minimal 
staging 
matched 

the small cast; the play featured 
only eight actors and one 
offstage percussionist. Every 
member of the cast performed 
brilliantly, 
many 
adopting 

multiple roles. One actress, for 
example, played Joe’s mother, 
the Rabbi, Henry and Ethel 
Rosenberg. Another played The 
Angel, 
Emily, 
Sister 
Ella 
Chapter 

and A Homeless Woman. 

This was a reminder of the 

power of theater in its simplest 
form. This was theater stripped 
of all glitter and glamour; it 
was theater at its simplest, 
and theater at its best. It was 
long, 
meandering 
and 
yet 

frighteningly powerful. It was a 
chilling statement on the very 
makeup of American society, a 
complex, 
thought-provoking 

and 
haunting 
depiction 
of 

the failures of contemporary 
American society.

Ultimately, the work’s central 

tenet is that there is no central 
tenet of contemporary society. 
Kushner suggests the human 
condition to be an endless 
power struggle in a moral 
vacuum, a harsh fight between 
progressive and reactionary 
forces in absence of any guiding 
beliefs.

SAMMY SUSSMAN

Daily Arts Writer

COURTESY OF KYLE PRUE

COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

COURTESY OF KYLE PRUE

‘Angels in America’ is a 
haunting look at society

As a relic of 
the ’80s, the 

play serves as a 
reminder of the 
negative side of 
the Reagan years

This was theater 

stripped of 

all glitter and 
glamour; it was 

theater at its 
simplest, and 

theater at its best