Black Dog

 

The story of redemption through the love of a dog isn’t new in Hollywood. Who hasn’t cried buckets at Lassie Come Home or The Incredible Journey?? But places like, China have a somewhat different kind of relationship with canines to be sure so this modern western set in the rundown town on the verge of the Gobi Desert, feels totally new and reinvented. 

The film starts with a sense of awe and incredulity as hundreds of dogs gallop down a valley side in front of a battered Chinese bus which overturns as the animals rush on. 

No Indians 

No covered wagons 

Just dogs and a crashed bus.

It’s an amazing scene . 

And this film by Guan Hu is full of such scenes.

It’s 2008 and China is supporting its Olympic heroes, but for the diminishing  rural/industrial population life is grim. In a nameless Town, full of empty slum apartment blocks, the feral dogs symbolise the dispossessed Chinese poor, despised by officialdom and lacking order and hope. 

Into this existence we follow one of the crashed bus passengers . Lang ( Eddie Peng)  is coming home after time in prison. Silent and morose, he finds his alcoholic father poorly and in charge of the most depressing zoo imaginable. Neighbours mourn their old life as the authorities engage Lang as one of the town’s dog catchers, a troupe of nasty characters who are not above beating to death dogs caught. 

But Lang rebels and although he faces a local butcher wanting revenge for his nephew’s supposed murder he is softened by the appearance of a strange black dog , who he befriends and eventually dotes on. 

It’s a strange, haunting film, heavy on symbolism and showing much criticism of the new Chinese way. 

I was thinking about it all the way home, a sign of a powerful movie I always think.

I had a Chinese takeaway tonight too, something I never do! 

I can never justify the cost

Tonight I said fuck it 

Dim sum, salt and pepper prawns and special fried rice

Bloody lovely