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Who loves dogs?

There is no coincidence that the title, Isle of Dogs, sounds almost exactly like “I love dogs”. The hidden message betrays the fact that this movie is a love letter to dogs and people who love their dogs. Not only dogs and dog-lovers receive a long love letter, Japanese culture is also on the receiving end of admiration. Let’s just say the movie is appealing in so many different ways to so many different people.

Man’s Best Friend

Isle of Dogs takes place in the near future in the Japanese city of Megasaki City where the corrupt Kobayashi has exiled every single dog to a trash island since all dogs are sick and apparently form a danger for humanity. When a dog asks, “Whatever happened to man’s best friend?”, the audience in the movie theatre was awfully quiet. Not every human agrees with Kobayashi’s decision, Kobayashi’s 12-year-old ward Atari in particular. Atari is the first human to go to the trash island and look for his beloved dog Spots, but Atari has an admirer who may or may not help him in the end.

Something very cool about Isle of Dogs is that the Japanese characters speak Japanese but there are no subtitles, meanwhile the barks of the dogs have been properly translated into English.

Three years

If you happen to be a huge Wes Anderson fan or you’ve seen the movie and couldn’t help but wonder how they made the movie? In London, you get the opportunity to visit an exposition where the little sets of the movie are on display together with the characters. It’s breathtaking to see how the movie was made. It took three years to make the entire movie and you understand why when you learn that they moved every single hair on the puppets with each different shot. All the puppets were handmade and every puppet has about a hundred different faces that get switched with almost every shot as well. If you get the opportunity to go, you really should. It’s free! The exhibition runs until the 8th of April.

Isle of Dogs is in theatres April 11th.