Saturday, February 9, 2008

Year of the Dog: Slipping into Weirdness


Mike White's Year of the Dog seems at first to have a lot going for it. It has a great cast: Molly Shannon, Laura Dern, John C. Reilly, and Peter Sarsgaard. The world of work scenes feel authentic in that quirky way The Office or Office Space did, partly because of the way that Shannon inhabits them. The first half of the like a romantic comedy with a hipness and an edge, not unlike The Good Girl, which White had writing credit for.

But then the film takes a couple of turns similar to the dogs of its lead protagonist Peggy the secretary. First one goes a bit astray to bad consequence and then another reveals its true nature by biting his master and mauling and killing one of its kind. What happens is that the protagonist goes mad and audience is thrown off kilter wondering what to feel about this late thirties/forties something single whose life spirals after Pencil the perfect beagle suddenly dies. She tries to jump start it with Romeo construction worker great white hunter neighbor played by Reilly (who has a great line talking about safaris for endangered species-get em while you can) and then with fellow animal lover, the sexually ambiguous (but looking and acting pretty darn gay) Sarsgaard. During the course of this, turns vegan and starts forging donation checks from the boss for animal rights causes that she website cruises at her work.

Shannon's performance is impressive. It reminds me of the vocal of Deborah Iyall's in Romeo Void when she would incant "A Girl in trouble is a temporary thing ." As she slips into animal obsessed weirdness, out comes a kind of plain with her pain that is quite disturbing. It is something familiar that many will recognize in coworkers they have been around in the past where someone makes a shift and you ask yourself what the heck is going on with this person.

When Year of the Dog took its strange left turn at close to the hour mark, I didn't know how to respond except by muting, putting it on 2x speed and reading captions for a time. I remember intense arguments among film goers in the seventies when folks would stridently disagree if Ruth Gordon's performances in Harold and Maude or Where's Papa were the stuff of comedic genius or disturbing and creepy. There were lots of other films in the sixties and seventies where characters with madness was equated and painted to have insightfulness and wisdom. That seemed to be the zeigeist.

I was recalling all this towards film's end when Peggy tried to make a valiant attempt at being normal by returning to her job (after forgery and embezzlement and attempted manslaughter on her neighbor? Come on now, Mike White) only to surf another animal activist website which was enough to make her ride off into the sunset on a PETA bus.
I vote for disturbing and creepy, and I'm not sure what it has to say about the spirit of our times.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:08 PM
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