Black Dog: an impressive plastic film (critic)
A man leaving prison, a rabid dog, a few notes from Pink Floyd… Guan Hu asserts himself as a disciple of Jia Zhangke at the gates of the Gobi desert.
There is Jia Zhangke in this film. So much so that we even come across Jia Zhangke in person … the great filmmaker of Still Life And The World There plays a supporting role, that of a little caïd, chief of a gang whose members converted into canids hunters. We are in 2008, the year of the Beijing Olympics, in a quasi-fantal city near the Gobi desert, emptied of part of its inhabitants but invaded by dogs, some of whom, says the rumor, may have the rage.
The film begins when Lang, a Muc Mutique, a former rocker, returns home after serving a prison sentence for a mysterious homicide. He will soon bind his destiny to that of a wandering greyhound. The wind blows, the camera captures desert landscapes with hypnotic panoramic blows, the atmosphere sails between thriller, western and post-apo.
Director Guan Hu (The 800 brigadeBig card of the year 2020) borrows from his godfather Jia the desire to mix the very large with the very small, the lives of a handful of almost immobile characters with the telluric movement of China in the background-an entire country, immense, propeling itself in the future, but forgetting some of its inhabitants on the side.
The themes are classic (redemption, self -reinvention), but plastic power impresses – even more when, thanks to two pieces of Pink Floyd escaped from The Wall (“Mother” and “Hey You”), the film takes off in lyrical and almost cosmic scrolls.
By Guan Hu. With Eddie Peng, Tong Liya, Jia Zhangke… Duration 1h50. Released March 5, 2025
