Thread bump, since I just found this film at the library. I was curious about it since I've long been interested in Japanese culture and media, and I'd read debates over
Isle of Dogs's portrayal of Japanese culture, with some saying it was stereotyped and appropriative, while
a Japanese-American writer in The New Yorker praised its authenticity. What I saw was kind of odd compared to the Japanese TV and movies I watch. It was steeped in Japanese traditionalism; like many Western portrayals of Japan, it played up the "exotic" Eastern stuff like traditional theater and art and Japanese baths and sushi and stuff, with little of the high-tech modernity that I associate with Japan. I can see how it could be taken as stereotyped. But then again, there's a certain symmetry to it, given the degree to which many of the Japanese shows and movies I see are obsessed with Western culture, peppered with English words, and so forth. Both cultures want to portray what's different about each other. But it did make it feel more like a heightened, fairy-tale Japan and made for an odd contrast with the actual Japan I see in Japanese shows and films.
As for the film as a whole, I didn't care for it. It was weird and dark and off-putting and tonally odd, and its humor didn't work for me. The conceit of the film was that human speech was mostly untranslated but dog barks were rendered into English. Okay. But the dogs didn't
act like dogs. Dogs are enthusiastic and emotional and guileless and wear their hearts on their, err, forepaws. These characters just stood around staring at the camera and talking in deadpans like they were appearing in
Ingmar Bergman's Dragnet. Their stoicism and reserve would've been a better fit to cats. (Also, why did they all have English names and Roman-script nametags?)
