White god (2014)

Kornél Mundruzcó's White god works best if you allow it to move from level to level. Parable, horror movie, drama - the film moves boldly from genre to genre and doesn't shy away from trying to say big things with a story that may strike some as bizarre. If you accept this restless plunging into several different cinematic expressions, this is for you.

The story starts in a very simple way. A girl moves in with her father. Reluctantly, very reluctantly, the father allows her to take the dear dog along with her. But the dog is too much trouble, he thinks, and drives out to the outskirts of Budapest, where he sends the dog to look after itself. The rather original way of telling the ensuing story is that we follow both the dog and the girl who goes to look for her pet.

The image of what people do to animals is not exactly flattering. I dare say that the film takes us on a spiritual journey from a dog's point of view. The dog encounters other dogs and humans who exploit, capture and hunt. The city of Budapest is seen from the perspective of the animal living in a precarious existence, hunted by humans who want to take advantage of it. It is easy to read this - there are also more or less explicit references - as a story about neo-fascism, about the emergence of race-thinking and a class of people living in fear. One could also interpret the film as a scary image of the kind of people bred by a situation of being outcasts in society. The eventual rage the film depicts towards the end is very, very hard to forget. But here the problems begin: isn't this kind of fantasy about the roaring, violent underclass actually often an expression of an extremely shady idea? What kind of fantasy is it, how is it meant to unsettle us? What kind of revenge does the ending signal? The film ends on an ambiguous note that suddenly seems inclined to pander to our longing for fairy tales with a happy resolution. I suspect that if I would re-watch the film, I would have a much less generous verdict - there are, one might say, traces of an exploitative approach here, where the dogs are reduced to mere symbols.

I find no fault with the element of allegory. It works rather well, even though the way of delivering the message is not exactly subtle (the father works in a slaugtherhouse...). But why settle for the subtle? Mundruczó skillfully conjures up fear by using a frantically pulsating camera that tracks the movements of the dog (dogs) and the girl who sets out to find it. The problem with the film - for me - was the music. The use of a bombastic action film score reduced some of the suspense. After all, this was not a Bruce Willis movie.