Black Dog [2024]

 Guan Hu’s bleak and wryly funny redemptive drama Black Dog straddled multiple genres – edgy revisionist Western, reflective state-of-the-nation cinema, sardonic social satire, and heartwarming human-animal buddy film – while delivering this simultaneously epic and intimate tale. It exhibited diverse cinematic influences – Jia Zhangke’s muted and melancholic commentaries on the human cost of China’s rampaging economic progress (the Chinese giant, incidentally, played a notable cameo in it), Kelly Reichardt’s love for oddball small-town outsiders, and Buster Keaton’s droll persona of a flummoxed individual unable to comprehend the world around him – which made it even more absorbing. Set in a derelict ghost town adjacent to the Gobi Desert – filled with deserted houses, inhabited by dwindling individuals existing on the margins and infested by violent strays, and superbly shot in wan yet striking widescreens – on the backdrop of preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it begins on an eccentric note as a ramshackle bus loses control and flips over upon being ambushed by a pack of wild canines. Lang (Eddie Peng), a former stunt motorcyclist and rock guitarist who’s just been released on parole from prison after serving many years for manslaughter, returns to this desolate wasteland that’s changed beyond recognition. There, upon joining a corrupt taskforce formed to free the town of strays – as part of a broader programme to give the place a cosmetic makeover ahead of the Olympics – this laconic bike-riding loner inadvertently befriends the wiry and feral titular dog. Meanwhile, he finds his father – former zoo-owner – drinking himself to death, tentatively reconnects with a beautiful and lively circus performer (Tong Liya) with whom he possibly had a romantic past, and is continually chased by a snake-venom peddler seeking revenge.

p.s. Watched it at the 2025 Bangalore International Film Festival (BIFFES).

Director: Guan Hu

Genre: Drama

Language: Mandarin

Country: China