I’ll tell you what i don’t like, and that is that people are reading non-existent political messages into it, and even worse, trying to relate it back to the current financial situation in Greece.
When one gets older, they are trapped by their knowledge, language, and experience.
When one gets older, they are trapped by their knowledge, language, and experience
We’re always trapped by these things, Robert; it’s just that when we’re older, we begin to realize the extent of our entrapment.
I thought Dogtooth was the best film of 2010 (but, then, I spent much of my 2010 living in the 1970s, as far as release dates go).
In the end, what I took away from it was the scary reality that we are a victim to our parents’ ideas. The more I thought about the ending the more I loved it. Even though this girl was able to escape the house, she is still trapped by her lack of knowledge, language, and experience.
I think it’s less a matter of being trapped, because she will be able to learn new things once she gets out, and more a matter of of what people are led to believe will cause them to do. The scene with the cat is a direct example of this principle (and an unbelievably hilarious inversion of the white rabbit scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail). He can learn the falseness of his beliefs quickly (like the Monty Python knights), so he is not trapped, but he is compelled, and that is more a matter of those who compel him.
It’s very much a film about the parents, it seems to me. The children are the inevitable victims of the parents’ actions, and so through the children you are able to highlight the failures of the parents. The parents want to raise their kids in a way which avoids the negative pressures of the outside world, but they don’t always realize the implications of the lies they tell about that world. The film does an amazing job of establishing the parents’ theoretical good intentions and the multitude of pragmatic compromises they must make to fit what is a practically awful idea inside these theoretically good intentions.
I wrote about it here
I found it interesting how some critics called it a black comedy. Sure, out of context some of the things that happen are sort of funny in a bizarre, uncomfortable sort of way, but I sure as hell wasn’t laughing. To me, it’s a very heavy film that is often very hard to watch. The whole thing felt a little too accurate.
“I think it’s less a matter of being trapped, because she will be able to learn new things once she gets out, and more a matter of of what people are led to believe will cause them to do.”Jeanrzej, I agree with this. If and when she is able to get out of the trunk, she will be able to learn new things just as she did by watching the movies. My point was more to point out the fact that she is literally trapped inside the trunk and I feel like this image is implying that she is also somewhat stuck or impaired by her lack of true, worldly experience. So, even if she is able to somehow get out of the trunk and completely escape her family, she is permanently handicapped by the backwards perception of the world which she has been taught for her whole life.
I found it interesting how some critics called it a black comedy. Sure, out of context some of the things that happen are sort of funny in a bizarre, uncomfortable sort of way, but I sure as hell wasn’t laughing. To me, it’s a very heavy film that is often very hard to watch. The whole thing felt a little too accurate.
If it’s not uncomfortable to some people then it’s not a black comedy, by definition. Taboo or morbid topics are a necessity, otherwise it’s not black comedy. It was uncomfortable to me, too, and I was sure as hell laughing. It’s all fake, you know. If you have ever enjoyed watching the spectacle of people being murdered en masse in an action film then it shouldn’t be too difficult to comprehend black comedy. Mass murder is not enjoyable, but a film about it can be.
My point was more to point out the fact that she is literally trapped inside the trunk and I feel like this image is implying that she is also somewhat stuck or impaired by her lack of true, worldly experience. So, even if she is able to somehow get out of the trunk and completely escape her family, she is permanently handicapped by the backwards perception of the world which she has been taught for her whole life.
Ah, yes, I agree, it’s a nice allegory for her situation. Of course, the large fence that they’re sort of trapped inside makes the point pretty clear, but I love how they are totally terrified of going outside of it. I don’t think she’s ‘permanently handicapped’, though. She’s not necessarily permanently trapped in the trunk. We all got over our misunderstanding of Santa Claus, of storks bringing babies home, of a lot of lies that our parents tell us. We could talk about neurological plasticity, but… I don’t think they’re quite old enough to argue about that.
I agree with Jean in her analysis of the film, and I found it equal parts disturbing and hilarious.
“I’ll tell you what i don’t like, and that is that people are reading non-existent political messages into it, and even worse, trying to relate it back to the current financial situation in Greece.’”
Hahah are people really thinking this? Hysterical. I’m glad someone started a discussion bc I was getting ready to. I need a Dogtooth support group after seeing it. I wasn’t completely understanding why the younger sister hit the brother with a hammer? The whole thing was equally brilliant and horrifying. People who are comparing it to Haneke…it is of a different realm. See so for yourself – streaming on Netflix.
I think the hitting of the brother with the hammer is to say that there is a lot of repressed/ disturbed anger with these ‘kids’ which comes out in dangerous ways, even if they themselves don’t understand it. Also the brother has of course got some release for his sexual tension whereas the sisters don’t really have anything. Plus the father as a role model does also have moments of quite brutal violence- so there’s that. A few quite plausible reasons I think.
“People who are comparing it to Haneke…it is of a different realm”
i think the cold, clinical precision of some of the early scenes is reminiscent of early Haneke, like The Seventh Continent. that’s it though.
“I found it interesting how some critics called it a black comedy. "
I’m shocked the critics responded so favourably to it, especially the American critics. generallyi they tend to be dismissive of these type of films, but for some reason they liked this one and not others.
I thought it was always interesting but I fail to see the greatness. The idea alone makes it worth the watch but I missed or just don’t get any message of what the film is really trying to say.
If anyone loved Dogtooth, you should check out The Temptation of St. Tony which I just got back from and it is similarly blackly humorous. I prefer it to Dogtooth by a good margin, even though Dogtooth is one of my favorite films of recent memory. Holy hell, it is amazing. Kind of like a mix of Kafka, Roy Andersson, and Philippe Grandrieux.
I agree with Jean in her analysis of the film, and I found it equal parts disturbing and hilarious.
That’s a good way to put it, except the Jean is supposed to be of the French male variety.
The terrible joke of the last image is that she really is stuck in the trunk. She’s not getting out. We who live in the world know there’s a little release handle. And if you’re like me, you were sitting there like an idiot waiting for the trunk to pop. We also know films (besides rocky and Jaws) and we have seen people in other films or tv shows slip into a car trunk so they can escape from it. But she’s not going to do that. She doesn’t have the information we have. All of her education is at the hands of these two monstrous parents who don’t want her to know about the world.and even feed her bad information to put her at even more of a remove than her physical isolation has her. She is disabled by her faulty knowledge of the world. Severely disabled!
Not all old cars have a trunk release handle. That’s something from the last 10 years or so, and the car is much older than that. Plus, whether she gets out or not is irrelevant to the film. The film is about what gets her in the trunk in the first place.
While watching the film my interest moved from the children to the parents. Rather than seeing them as villains hell-bent on maintaining a “fascist” hold on their children’s preceptions of the world just for the sake of it, I actually began to wonder about the intense anxieties and fears that drive them to shelter their children to the point of imprisonment. It seems to me that they are terrified of the world, for whatever reason, and that their creation of this hermetic environment is not so much for the purpose of protecting their children from a malicious “outside” than it is a way of them easing their anxieties about a something they intensely fear, refuse to confront, and are unwilling to understand. I don’t know…that’s what I think anyway.
I definitely agree, Temitope. One thing I noticed: Their TV, instead of becoming a portal to the outside world like it is for everyone else, is only used as a way of watching home movies that they shoot of themselves. In this way it’s almost touching that the family has so much emphasis on the family, that they get really excited just to gather around and watch each other. We think of the problems of kids sitting around the TV for hours on end, not socializing, and here it’s totally the opposite. However, at the same time, it’s also a relic of an outside world which uses it in a way totally different from them for the majority of the time. I especially wondered about the mother, who it appears doesn’t ever leave the grounds of the house for any reason. She grew up on the outside but chooses to completely board herself up inside, only using the telephone to contact the father. Her position is then totally different from theirs, even though she has essentially the same constraints.
I have written my opinions on Dogtooth on several threads but I’ll just say something that I find hilarious: not one Greek from this site has commented on any Dogtooth related thread, ha ha ha.
Isn’t the t.v also used for watching pornography?
Ah—my apologies Jean. I gambled and lost, which isn’t surprising since I’m just coming back from Vegas.
I acknowledge your masculinity ;)
@Jeanrzej
Of course the film is about what gets her in the trunk in the first place. But it ends in a way that underscores her imprisonment and disability by playing on our expectations based on conventional film grammar. In conventional films, the escapee who planfully gets into a car trunk escapes when given her chance, i.e., when the captors give her the chance by leaving the scene. Of course it’s possible that some viewer who is not susceptible to film conventions would understand, as soon as the girl gets into the trunk when it’s parked in the driveway, that she’s just gotten into another prison. But the trope is she’s escaping. I think the last image is intended to be another dark joke.
You didn’t see it that way, huh?
I really enjoyed Dogtooth. It was funny and understated and simple. In the end, though, I didn’t get very emotionally involved with all the strangeness. Maybe it’s a good thing the director didn’t push us to feel a certain emotion, but it felt a little cold and I ended up just enjoying the movie and not getting really involved. Do you think that was a specific choice?
Anyone else feel that the “brother” who “lives” outside the fence is a real character? It seems that the 3 children believe with their whole heart that he exists even to the point of throwing food over the fence so he does not starve. It also seems that the son talks to him. Does this escaped son come back and try to convince the others to run away? I think it is possible that their oldest child fled imprisonment and the parents use the cat as an excuse to “kill” the possibility of a repeated attempt at escape and reinforce it through imagery and a funeral service.
Thoughts?
Of course the film is about what gets her in the trunk in the first place. But it ends in a way that underscores her imprisonment and disability by playing on our expectations based on conventional film grammar. In conventional films, the escapee who planfully gets into a car trunk escapes when given her chance, i.e., when the captors give her the chance by leaving the scene. Of course it’s possible that some viewer who is not susceptible to film conventions would understand, as soon as the girl gets into the trunk when it’s parked in the driveway, that she’s just gotten into another prison. But the trope is she’s escaping. I think the last image is intended to be another dark joke.
You didn’t see it that way, huh?
It’s a possibility, but I thought the play on film grammar was probably the least important element of the scene. If you watch a film for 2 hours and see roughly 0 examples of typical film grammar then there seems to be little reason to all of a sudden go – ‘Oh, now this is going to turn into a typical plot driven film’. I wouldn’t say it’s unique to film grammar, either – in any narrative, if someone goes in a small box they’re probably going to come out, unless the box itself is meaningful. For Dogtooth, I was pretty certain that the box was more meaningful than her escape from it. To refrain from having her come out means that the questions of ‘what comes next’ are put on indefinite hold and the only apparent question is: ‘will she get out at all?’, and that is the same question that has been posed the entire film. As such, I never for a second thought she would get out, because it would be totally pointless. It was a possibility, of course, because there are basically 3 possibilities – she doesn’t get out, she gets free, or her dad finds her – but the film rarely has any answers, it just has questions.
Anyone else feel that the “brother” who “lives” outside the fence is a real character? It seems that the 3 children believe with their whole heart that he exists even to the point of throwing food over the fence so he does not starve. It also seems that the son talks to him. Does this escaped son come back and try to convince the others to run away? I think it is possible that their oldest child fled imprisonment and the parents use the cat as an excuse to “kill” the possibility of a repeated attempt at escape and reinforce it through imagery and a funeral service.
The kids believe that their brother lives outside. It has been well established that what the kids believe has absolutely no relationship to what we would call common sense, so I see no reason to believe this. After all, the kids seem to believe without hesitation that the mother is pregnant with twins and a dog. The difficulty is not in finding a pragmatic explanation for how they could believe the brother is outside without having ever seen him and more in finding an explanation for how they could disbelieve the brother is outside without having ever seen him. There are few things I can think of that would actually prompt them to disbelieve.
I really enjoyed Dogtooth. It was funny and understated and simple. In the end, though, I didn’t get very emotionally involved with all the strangeness. Maybe it’s a good thing the director didn’t push us to feel a certain emotion, but it felt a little cold and I ended up just enjoying the movie and not getting really involved. Do you think that was a specific choice?
Given that the cinematography quite often doesn’t show people’s faces or eyes, the simplest method of generating sympathy in melodrama, I’d say it’s deliberate.
Dogtooth may not be typical but it is above all a plot-driven film. I’m actually surprised anyone would miss that. The very name is a foreshadowing of what’s going to happen, and it’s practically all about what is going to happen. What did you think it was, a character study?
Dogtooth may not be typical but it is above all a plot-driven film. I’m actually surprised anyone would miss that. The very name is a foreshadowing of what’s going to happen, and it’s practically all about what is going to happen. What did you think it was, a character study?
A dystopia, actually. I disagree with what you think the emphasis is, although I do appreciate your condescending pretentiousness.
I aim to please. ;-)
Seriously, whether or not the film is a study in dystopia,. which seems like a reasonable interpretation, it doesn’t rule out its being plot-driven. You yourself have talked about what happens next, after the film is over (“she will be able to learn new things once she gets out”—really? She’s a character in a film, and in the film, she doesn’t get out. End of story—literally! No?) Didn’t you also get caught up in plot, so caught up you spoke as though you thought something would happen to this character after the film went dark?
Your reading of the film doesn’t rule out my reading of the ending of the film. Does it?
PS: It doesn’t rule out that on one level this film works as a critique of conventional film grammar.
There’s a difference between ‘ruling out that it’s plot driven’ and it being ‘above all a plot-driven film’.
The film has a plot. This doesn’t mean that it is or that I must think it is ‘above all a plot-driven film’.
I did not ‘miss’ that it was a plot-driven film simply because I disagree with your conception of its main emphasis. The name of the film has more implications than merely plot-based ones. Again, your condescension is unwelcome and unwarranted. At no time did I rule out your reading of the film. At every point in time you have attempted to rule out the possibility of other conceptions of the film.
Get over yourself.
Unbelievable! And here I thought you had to get over yourself!
We really got off on the wrong foot here. Maybe it was all me, I don’t know. If so, I sincerely apologize.
I certainly did not rule out the possibility of other conceptions of the film. I was quite sure that’s what you were doing. What we have here, very simply, is a failure to communicate.
Je m’excuse. D’accord?
Mike Odmark
I watched this film last night with a couple friends and would love to hear some thoughts on it. At first I was unsure of its merit. The first half felt like a poor Haneke imitation to me and some of the scenes felt exploitative and played just for shock (the cat). By the third act I became hooked by the eldest sisters’ panic and bizarre behavior after watching the videos. Even so, I felt a bit so-so when the credits rolled.
Our discussion afterwards was very interesting as my two friends were home-schooled. Because of this background, they were greatly affected/disturbed by the film. It may have hit a little too close to home for them. The things in the movie that I rolled my eyes at (the eldest suddenly cutting the brothers’ arm, the dancing), they saw as very astute and true observations of how people react to isolated and sheltered lives.
In the end, what I took away from it was the scary reality that we are a victim to our parents’ ideas. The more I thought about the ending the more I loved it. Even though this girl was able to escape the house, she is still trapped by her lack of knowledge, language, and experience.
What’d you guys think?