Wes Anderson’s Kurosawa- and Miyazaki-inspired ‘Isle of Dogs’ opens 68th Berlinale

BERLIN, Germany – Wes Anderson made his Berlinale come back with the first ever animated film to open the festival: Isle of Dogs – Atari’s Rise.

Flanked with a stellar cast and fellow storytellers Jason Schwartzman, Roman Coppola, and Kunichi Nomura, Anderson tells a story set in dystopian Japan, not so far into the future.

Dogs banished to an island full of trash and a boy who goes there to look for his beloved companion. All this in the most challenging form of animation – stop-motion.

Anderson admits that for Isle of Dogs, he drew inspiration from Japanese animated films. “I really got interested in Japanese animation in the time before I did Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Anderson shared. He also went on to name Japanese directors Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki as inspirations for the film.

Samurai elements as well as traditional Japanese drums in Isle of Dogs do make the perfect nod to Kurosawa’s work. Miyazaki, meanwhile, enters the picture through the details and in the huge chunks of silence throughout the film.

Anderson says that while making the movie, he and composer Alexndre Desplat usually had to rein themselves in, as they wanted to keep the movie quiet. “With Miyazaki, you get nature and you get moments of peace – a kind of rhythm that is not in the American animation tradition so much. That inspired us quite a lot,” Anderson added. 

The movie is a classic Anderson. A hundred and one minutes of dry humour and irony paired with quirky story telling and visually appealing, symmetrical shots. An animated film for adults that Anderson himself admits ended up being quite timely. The antagonist in the film is a politician who turns the population against man’s best friend and sends them away.

However, he says they did not mean for it to be like that. The idea started with dogs living in a dumpster – a story they want to tell. He and his fellow scriptwriters were also toying with the idea of doing something related to Japan. They put everything together and it evolved from there. “When you’re working on a script, you don’t necessarily have the whole thing in mind. You’re gathering things and searching for what the movie is going to be.”

Berlinale and Wes Anderson film regular Tilda Swinton plays the Oracle dog in the movie. She says she doesn’t remember how many times she’s been at the Berlinale but she’s been going regularly since 1985 and by now, it feels like more than 20 times. “I’ve been here in every capacity except cleaner,” she quipped during the press conference.

At the red carpet event, Swinton also told Rappler what makes working with Anderson special. “He’s my friend and it’s always a good thing to work with your friends.”

When asked about his star-studded cast, Anderson says, “Most of the actors are people who I either have worked with or who I have loved for years.”

Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Scarlett Johansson, Greta Gerwig, Liev Schreiber, Frances McDormand, and even Yoko Ono also lend their voices to the peculiar bunch of characters.

Anderson usually gets some of the best in the industry for his films but Isle of Dogs is arguably his most star-studded work to date. 

“One thing about an animated movie, you can’t really say you’re not available. We can do it anytime at all. We can do it at your house, any hour of the day. There’s no excuse. That helped.”

This is the 4th time for Anderson in the Berlinale and the second time he is opening the festival. In 2014, one of his most well-known films, The Grand Budapest Hotel, made its world premiere here as the opening film. It later went on to become a box office hit and was even nominated for best picture in the Oscars. – Rappler.com