Why I Liked Dogtooth (2009)
Yorgos Lanthimos’ film is simultaneously bemusing and intelligent
Is it satire? A sharp critique of homeschooling? Plato’s allegory of the cave? If there is something Dogtooth (2009) achieves, that’s giving its viewers plenty of puzzling scenes to discuss. From the minutiae of the script to the surprisingly reduced €250,000 budget, almost everything about this movie is worth mentioning. The film received an international appraisal, being awarded the prize for Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival and becoming the first Greek film in thirty years to be nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.
The historical context of the film is also relevant. Dogtooth was released amid the Greek debt crisis, which resulted in brutal austerity measures, high unemployment and political instability that made filmmakers question the state of Greek politics and culture through perspectives never seen before. Most of these movies are labelled as members of the Greek Weird Wave and, whilst director Yorgos Lanthimos claimed the only thing they had in common was that they are “very cheap, very small films”, his film is still unsettling. Yet, beyond that weirdness, there is a fantastic script, an intelligent narrative and a trace of satire that every viewer should be aware of. In this story, I summarize the different interpretations of Dogtooth along with the details that consolidate it as a remarkable movie.
A plot with multiple readings
The movie follows a Greek factory owner (Christos Stergioglou) and his wife (Michelle Valley), who isolate their family at home for unknown reasons. Their children are nameless and they are referred to as the Older Sister (Angeliki Papoulia), the Younger Sister (Mary Tsoni) and the Son (Christos Passalis). They do not know the outside world and have been provided such a distorted education that cats are seen as man-eating beasts. Only when one of their dog teeth falls can they leave the house through the Father’s car. Through the film, Lanthimos examines the behaviour of the family in their daily affairs and interactions.
The plot gives little information about the motivations behind the situations and reactions of the characters, opening the door for a wide array of interpretations. Film critic Roger Ebert understood it as an analogy of how homeschooling is detrimental for children whilst, from a political perspective, some viewers believe that Lanthimos was criticizing the older Greek generations and politicians for tampering with the financial future of the youth. Some viewers have even theorized that the film is a representation of Plato’s cave allegory. I disagree slightly here: the philosopher did not necessarily refer to the situations portrayed in Dogtooth, and extrapolating his myth to a social context might be overcomplicated (although I will not discard it). To me, the movie represented the impossibility of societal rules (traditions, governments, institutions) to subjugate the individual and deprive them of their existence.
Still, Amy Nicholson from the Unspooled podcast presented a hypothesis that grabbed my attention over others. What if Lanthimos’ ultimate goal was to avoid giving an explicit explanation of the plot? Nicholson goes back to a scene where the Father plays Fly Me To The Moon but mistranslates the lyrics to continue brainwashing his children. She brilliantly theorizes how the whole movie could be representing the conflict between an imposed interpretation of art against the freedom of finding their own meaning. If this is true, the fact that we are theorizing about the multiple messages of the film means that it achieved its purpose.
A meticulous script
In a film where language gets distorted to the extreme, it would seem easy to find grammatical inaccuracies and loose ends in the dialogues. That is not the case with Dogtooth. It amazes me how the children speak as if they were in a Dora The Explorer episode, with automatic and simplified interactions that prevent critical thinking beyond their parents’ teachings. There is a particularly impactful scene where, after watching Jaws, the Older Sister tells the Younger to call her by the name of “Bruce”. The latter, attracted by the idea of having a name, chooses to be called “Back”, as she was watching her sister’s. This goes beyond a linguistic misunderstanding: not knowing what a name is, the Younger Sister couldn’t find one beyond everyday objects and nouns, and so she was incapable of understanding how her sister had not only gained a name but a new identity.
The cast is incredibly talented, especially those playing the children. They might be in their early adulthood, but their gazes, the way they blink when talking to their parents and their voice tones show the behaviour of five-year-olds. How could anybody react differently in that situation? They have never met other people, and their daily activities are reduced to competing in simple games for stickers. The best scenes, in my opinion, are delivered by Angeliki Papoulia when imitating the characters in the movies she had seen, just like children imitate the characters of their favourite shows.
A satirical ending
At first glance, the movie offers little room to laugh. Still, director David Lynch regarded the film as a fantastic comedy. I agree that the ending is great satire: after removing her dogtooth, the Older Sister leaves the house through the trunk of the Father’s car. But how does he react upon her disappearance? After years of teaching his children that the car was the only way to leave, he exits the house and looks for her on a nearby road, as if she could have ever known that walking out was an option. The Father eventually gives up, leaving his daughter to die in the trunk. Ironically, the Older Sister beats her parents at their own game, whilst they had built a reality too distorted for them to control and understand.
All in all, this is a fantastic movie. No matter the scene, I always discover a hidden piece of information in the dialogues, and the freedom of understanding makes every rewatch as enjoyable as the first. I have not seen many movies where the director proposes multiple profound topics for the viewer to analyze. Those are the reasons why I liked Dogtooth.
