‘Black Dog’ is an artistic achievement where sensible acting is furthered by rigorous direction and expansive cinematography, bringing the viewer to the lives of a China rarely seen in the media. The picture can be, at the same time, unforgiven but caring and loving; there is also the symbolism of a pack of dogs roaming in the countryside of the Asian powerhouse nation while it prepares for the grandiosity of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
This year, the beauty and craftsmanship of ‘Black Dog’ led it to win the Un Certain Regard award at the 77th Cannes Festival ceremony, 18 years after the first Chinese-language film to do so, ‘Luxury Car’ (2006). The film, directed by Guan Hu, tells the sad and endearing story of Lang (Eddie Peng) and the dark dog that is alluded to in the title.
Lang is a former motorcycle stunt rider who performed in a circus in his small city in the Gobi Desert, Northwest China. After being released from jail, he joins the dog patrol that is clearing the stray dogs before the Olympic Games. Lang is an outsider and forms a bond with a thin, distrustful black stray who is not part of the pack of dogs that roam the city and its surroundings.
The protagonist is not only a former stunt rider but also a musician. He is still a man of few words, and most of the noise emitted from his mouth is directed to the dog. As the film passes, Lang communicates more with other humans, including those who care for him, but he is always laconic.
Part of the communication in the relations involves violence be it between the patrol and the dogs: in the way the black dog reacts in the first encounters with Lang or how the protagonist interacts with other males from the area. However, the fighting is never glamorized, nor is the camera focused on it. The story tells more about the psychology behind aggression, be it physical or verbal. Lang seems disillusioned with humanity and his condition as a former inmate who is scoped by suspicious eyes from strangers and hatred by people looking for vengeance on his supposed crimes. This condition of loneliness, and the hardship with dealing with emotions combined with Peng’s skill, explains his fondness for stray dogs and the wild animals from the city’s zoo.
The acting by lead dog Xiao Xin is well conducted. The Jack Russell-Greyhound, with its skin-to-bone frame, impacting brown eyes, and defensive behaviour, shows how harsh the life of a street and unloved animal can be. It doesn’t fall into the emotional trap of dogs looking affable to the camera, sharing with competence one of the picture’s messages that stray animals deserve love as much as house mascots.
The impoverished zoo signalizes the cruelty of such attractions with its skeletal and deteriorated structures, as well as the condition of abandonment experienced by humans in the picture who are mentally ill, aged, or just discarded in their meagre lives. Among the zoo animals are a simian, a tiger, a grey wolf, and rare birds, which can be interpreted as an allegory of entertainers at the end of their careers.
The poverty portrayed in ‘Black Dog’ is also a form of violence in the way scarce conditions condense human lives and limit their dreams to the point that those characters don’t have much from the lives that they lead. They aren’t supposed to expect much from it, what these people deal with is what they have in front of them, and it can be seen in the character of Grape (Tong Liya), the circus performer woman, whose life is going nowhere; Liya makes Grape feels like a former school prom queen yearning for love, the sort of emotion that can’t be fulfilled with audience cheers or material gifts.
The cinematography by Weizhe Gao deepens the experience as it denotes the isolation and bleakness of a city in the desert area; the amplified camera shots put buildings and bodies apart from each other; however, in ‘Black Dog,’ the canines have their bodies closer to each other more than the humans, which points out fractured human relations and the echo of lonely hearts.
British progressive rock stalwart Pink Floyd brings the surrounding feeling of melancholy. Lang is a huge fan of the band to the point its name is marked on his bike, which helps compose the loner character and adds to the human component, helping the film to become a story with foreign appeal.
‘Black Dog’ has a special place in world cinema and is a great representation of Chinese culture; a China different from the technological advances seen on the news or the antagonistic role it used to play in past Hollywood. The structural city poverty that affects the inhabitants in the end enhances the film’s ability to show the strength of the human spirit and the beautiful relations between humans and other animals.
Rating: 
(5 / 5)
BLACK DOG is brought to the UK and Ireland by Europe-wide distributor Trinity CineAsia and will open in UK and Irish cinemas from Friday 30th August 2024
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