Imagine Lassie Come
Home rewritten with Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and the Roman slave
epic Spartacus in mind and you’ll get the basic notion behind White
God, an ingenious thriller from Hungary about the revolt of mistreated
street dogs in contemporary Budapest. This movie isn’t recommended for
the most sensitive dog lovers, as it’s filled with scenes of brutality.
But graphic realism is a necessary part of the film’s power. Though it definitely
pulls at the heartstrings, White God eschews obvious sentiment for subtle
commentary, turning a good dog tale into a cunning allegory about societal abuse
of “undesirable” populations.
The action revolves around 13-year-old Lili (Zsofia Psotta),
whose devotion to her mixed-breed dog, Hagen, causes trouble between her and
her divorced father (Sandor Zsoter). In a dystopian take on current
Hungarian society, only purebred (“Hungarian” bred) dogs are tolerated; mixed
breeds are heavily taxed when owned, which means most are left to roam the
streets, prey to the city’s army of dog-catchers and unscrupulous hustlers
looking to exploit them for a variety of awful purposes. Lili‘s father
abandons Hagen on the street rather than pay the tax, causing a separation between
him and his daughter greater than that between her and her lost dog. The
film then moves in parallel story tracks, the lives of the human and canine
soul mates mirroring each other as they adjust to their mutual loss and to the
newfound cruelties of their decaying and corrupt world. Hagen searches
for Lili and a way home but finds only garbage-strewn streets and foul empty
lots where gangs of unwanted mutts gather at night after long days of hunting
for food and evading capture. Eventually he is caught by a trainer for
the illegal dog fighting industry; a series of brutal scenes in which he's
transformed into a canine gladiator follow. At her own school, Lili, a
trumpeter, is cruelly treated by an authoritarian music teacher. In a symbolic act of solidarity, she
repeatedly runs away from home, skipping school, prowling the streets, hanging
out in unsavory parts of town, only to be caught by authorities and returned to
the confines of her father’s cramped, cage-like apartment (as well as the overcrowded
rehearsal room, a pound of sorts for kids). Hagen’s introductory fight
with another dog in a bloodstained pit is intercut with Lili’s attempts to
jumpstart adulthood by accompanying an older classmate to a hellishly lit
basement club where alcohol and drugs are exchanged to the apocalyptic beat of
a punk band. Badly bruised from these degrading experiences, both survive
relatively intact; nevertheless, we witness innocence being lost.
Hagen’s journey eventually leads to the pound, but only momentarily:
rising to hero status (he’s prophetically named for a warrior in Norse
mythology), he triggers a mass escape of mixed-breeds. Under his
leadership, they become a marauding force, bringing the city to a
standstill (much as Spartacus and his
gladiator army challenged Rome). It is
here that the film becomes more
fanciful, and director Kornel Mundruczo and his screenwriters mix moments
of sly humor in with the terror. Trotting out a number of horror film
clichés, they have Hagen and his troops hunt down the people who’ve abused them
one by one in order to exact a bloody revenge. One particularly striking
scene has the victim enter a darkened room where two dogs hide behind an
old-style sofa. The camera pans at floor
level to reveal their paws as they stand quietly waiting to attack—ironically,
less conspicuous than human feet would be since their paws are similar in shape to the furniture’s
curved legs. The visual joke contains a philosophical question: when
the oppressed turn on their oppressors, does “objectification” suddenly become
an advantage? Whether or not that’s
stretching a point, I imagine this scene would have brought a smile to Alfred
Hitchcock’s face.
Lili’s stature grows along with Hagen’s, but by rising above
rebellion instead of surrendering to it. Her brush with delinquency
behind her, she reconciles with her father, becoming the parent to his
tantrum-throwing child (she comforts him when he cries). His development
has been arrested, perhaps, by the frustrations of a failed marriage and career
(an ex-professor, he now inspects meat in a slaughterhouse, though no
explanation for his fall from grace is ever given). At the film’s climax,
when their intertwined fates bring Hagen and Lili face to face again, she discovers
her own destiny as a leader by becoming peacemaker between the human and animal
worlds. In a scene of visual bravado,
she pacifies the dog pack with a beautiful solo on her horn; one by one they
lie down until she is surrounded by hundreds of submissive dogs in a ragged
heart-shaped formation. When Lili and
her father lie down with them, the stunning shot has dogs and humans literally
on the same level (and roughly the same size), equalized in their relationship
to each other and to the world they share as defined by the space of the
screen. But beyond the screen’s edges, tragedy
is still looming—this moment of peace and equality will almost certainly be short-lived. The frailty, if not absolute impossibility,
of humane relations between the species makes for a heartbreaking finale, eloquently stated
in this closing image.
Despite some playful use of tropes from the pet adventure, thriller,
and horror genres, White God is a serious,
occasionally grim, parable about human responsibility toward all species,
including our own. Its cautionary nature exposes the peril society faces from
discriminating against weaker, minority populations. There's clever irony in casting dogs in that role:
whatever human-like intelligence or “moral” behavior they display has been taught them by their human masters. And what the mixed breeds learn from humans is chiefly terror and violence. Is
it any wonder, the film asks its audience, that they respond in kind? They are what we have made them.
White God establishes
this premise in two ways. First, and
most obviously, by presenting an alternative to a relationship based on dominance in the
loving, respectful connection between Lili and Hagen that precedes—and
ultimately triumphs over—his transformation into a vicious killer. But, more slyly, it enters through some subtle
anthropomorphism in the second half of the film. Left to survive on their own, the outcast
dogs don’t act like we might expect them to, as hardened brutes. They don’t fight for territory on meeting—in truth, they barely even growl at each other. Their attempts to find food and shelter are
marked less by rivalry than by teamwork between tribe members. It’s not exactly Disney, but isn’t a nature documentary
either. The dogs descend into savagery
only when they begin to display human cunning. After Hagen takes charge of the escapees,
they band together to perform the complex business of targeted revenge, using
sophisticated behaviors like decoying and surprise. Human intelligence is the source of their
savagery—it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there only when dogs act like people.
Which raises the question of the provocative title. White “God”? Of course it’s a play on words (doG), but
more important, it underscores the film’s boldest idea--that there is a moral
correlation between discarded animals and marginalized people. The film’s God is “White,” likening
a city that discriminates against mixed-breed dogs to a society whose laws and
attitudes discriminate against non-white peoples. The dogs’ rampage through the corroded back
streets of Budapest could be violence that explodes among minority populations
in the slums of any modern city. But “God”
also suggests a religious component to this violence—specifically, acts of
terror by radical religious groups. The
pound, the brutal dog-catchers, the pervasive criminal element—all the repressive
conditions the movie’s “racially” profiled
dogs are forced to live under have their corollaries in the real world of the politically
excluded and religiously suspect. Harrassed by authority and exploited
by ruthless, self-serving men, this underclass is understandably an easy breeding
ground for radicalization and rebellion.
The mayhem committed by the film’s trained-to-be-a-killer dog and his
followers mirrors the acts of murder and destruction we’ve become all too familiar
with in recent years. The title White God therefore has a deeply ironic
meaning, bringing together the ideas of racial and religious authority with
their historical abuse, and the continuing societal violence that is the tragic
consequence.
The film’s inventiveness isn’t confined to such bold
comparisons, however. First and last,
this movie is about the dogs. And they
are truly amazing. Remarkably well
trained, the dogs make the fantastic events--particularly in the film’s second
half--frighteningly real. Suspension of
disbelief is never a problem. The filmmakers worked closely
with trainers who rounded up street dogs and rescued others from pounds.
After filming was over, they helped them all get adopted, practicing what
their film so movingly preaches. Hagen
is portrayed by two brothers, Luke and Body, and they are both so skillfully
directed that their combined performance as the film’s central and most complex
character actually seems nuanced. That
may be the ultimate testament to the level of commitment the filmmakers brought
to this harrowing and insightful film.
