'My Dog Tulip' a marvelous animated look at person-pet bond
My Dog Tulip Opens Monday at the Michigan Theater Grade: A- Review by Jeff Meyers of the Metro Times
Ah, the bond between man and mutt. It's a relationship that's been poorly explored by Hollywood. Whether it's Benji, Air Bud, Lassie or Old Yeller, the artifice is too obvious, the need for melodramatics or comic antics too forced to capture the true joys and complexities of human-dog companionship. Plus there's simply no getting around the fact that real-world pooches make pretty bad actors.
Husband-wife team Paul and Sandra Fierlinger have skipped that complication by taking a graphic novel approach to their adaptation of J.R. Ackerley's 1956 novel "My Dog Tulip." A droll but contemplative account of how an Alsatian hound influences the way the author encounters the world and the people in it, this animated marvel is filled with the kind of aloof and witty observations you might expect from a contemporary of E.M. Forster or W.H. Auden.
Wonderfully narrated by Christopher Plummer, the diary-like chronicle also ventures into surprisingly candid discussion of bowel movements and mating, as Ackerely diligently jots down every thought and encounter. There's great humor, honesty and humanity in these scenes, as his affections give way to self-reflection and eventually revelation. Still, some may find Ackerely's seemingly unconscious identifications with Tulip's sexuality and his fixation on defecation a tad discomfiting. The lack of personal censorship is surprising, given the author's buttoned-up lifestyle and mindset. It's almost as if Ackerley is daring his audience to make assumptions about his inner landscape.
It's then odd, however, that though the film has myriad vignettes centered on defecation and the quest to get Tulip laid, the Fierlingers never once acknowledge Ackerley's homosexuality. It's a notable (though far from tragic) dodge in their otherwise highly personal narrative.
Ultimately, what makes "My Dog Tulip" such a terrific success is its spare New Yorker cartoon-style animation. Though it looks hand-drawn, the film is wholly computer-generated, employing thousands upon thousands of pixel-derived illustrations to create its fluid, watercolor effects. It's wonderfully expressive stuff, simple in its execution but continually filled with visual delights and surprises. You'll be amazed at how much character and personality the filmmakers squeeze from the smudge-like pastel that is Tulip.
Equally effective are the sketchpad asides the Fierlingers employ to illustrate Ackerley's digressions. Like pencil doodles in the margins of a notebook, they deliver hilarious and fantastical tangents — the best of which is an out-of-nowhere musical number that has Plummer and an angelic chorus singing: "You smell my a--; I smell yours."
Don't be misled by the animation; "My Dog Tulip" is decidedly for adults. Not just a tale of pet-owner devotion, it produces the kind of blunt sincerity, touching compassion and psychological insight that's rare to find in any film.
Comments
Maureen
Mon, Mar 28, 2011 : 12:58 p.m.
Nice acknowledgement of this wonderful literary film. It is brilliant on many levels, primarily because it does describe the close bond between dogs and their companions. It is often hilarious as are our interactions with our dogs. As serendipity will have it, I read "My Dog Tulip" years ago before an unruly dog just like Ackerley's landed in my life. I named her Tulip. But in 1998 neither we dog owners or the greater society would put up with what Ackerley allowed with Tulip. Agree that it's helpful to know about Ackerley's homosexuality but to write this review about a story published in 1956, you need to know just a bit about the laws at the time in Britain, beginning with the "Buggery Act of 1533." Certainly there was still a prosecution and conviction in 1954 for those "crimes of indecency." The police harrassed homosexuals. At least see Wikipedia's "LGBT rights in the United Kingdom." From Wikipedia: "Ackerley worked hard to plumb the depths of his sexuality in his writings. He was openly gay, at least after his parents' deaths, and belonged to a circle of notable literary homosexuals that flouted convention, specifically the homophobia that kept gay men in the closet or exposed openly gay men to persecution." So the Fierlingers created "My Dog Tulip" without altering Ackerley's brilliant memoir. Four years after Tulip's publication, Ackerley's entire story was published with his only work of fiction, "We Think the World of You," which was the entire story of how he came by Tulip from his young, working class lover. It was made into a terrific film of the same name in 1988 starring Alan Bates and Gary Oldman, available on NetFlix, and well worth seeing. As you can see in "My Dog Tulip," Ackerley was entirely in thrall to Tulip; with "...World" you can see how she dominated his life and how he became isolated from society because of their obsessive love for each other..