Year of the Dog (2007)
I generally enjoy screenwriter Mike White’s skewed genre tweakings; particularly his inspirational teacher who’s equally inspired by his students film (School of Rock) and the kinky, admirably gonzo buddy movie Chuck and Buck. With Year of the Dog, White has also assumed directorial responsibilities, and the film would appear to be taking a page out of the Alexander Payne play book in using a common bit of domestic heartbreak as a tragi-comic signifier of larger things.
An admirable ambition. Alexander Payne, after only a few films, is one of the great voices of modern comedy. The trouble is that that sort of thing doesn’t really jive with Mike White’s voice, which leans more on the broader stereotype from Hell side. White has tempered his yuppie outrage here with a bit of Payneish empathy, and that doesn’t do him any favors. White cancels himself out with Year of the Dog, and the result is a film you’ll barely remember one way or the other a few days later.
It begins promisingly with a quiet, wrenching opening: Peggy (Molly Shannon), an obvious problem case with other people, finds her dog dead after he strangely wanders away the night before. White hits just the right notes of heartbreak here, and his not quite defined tone (is this tongue in cheek? does White mean this?) lends the film an underlying current of ambiguity that steers it from schmaltz.
Then the movie…well, it doesn’t go downhill exactly, it really doesn’t go anywhere. Year of the Dog coasts for another 75 minutes on flat characterizations ( further accentuated by White’s visual style, which is like a contemp slacker variation of Ozu’s 180 degree technique, everyone speaks to the camera) and unfunny variations on White’s anxiety of the damned sensibility.
The ending, in which Peggy commits to her eccentricity and essentially tells the rest of the world to go fuck itself, is also quite moving, but its because White seems to, briefly, be reconnecting to his own alienation wanderer thing. Mike White is talented, I want to see him direct again, but Year of the Dog doesn’t quite make it.
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