Fans of the master of quirk and colour can release their bated breath and draw another one to hold in anticipation. It’s been announced Wes Anderson’s next project will be a stop-motion film about dogs.
Having already delved into animation with one his best films ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’, Anderson is heading back into that world, this time focusing on canines. Fantastic Mr. Fox was a rare film, outside of Disney, that was equally appealing to children and adults so it will be exciting to see what he does with the new venture. Further details are grainy but it’s been reported the director is taking a lot of inspiration from Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica and his 1954 comedy/drama ‘The Gold of Naples’.
The Gold of Naples (or Every Day’s a Holiday) tells six different stories about people living in the city, including a clown, pizza maker, and gambler. The film equivalent of a book of short stories. Last year Anderson spoke about doing an anthology film, saying he’d been toying with it for a while.
“I’ve always been interested in this form of a movie that’s a collection of stories. And often [anthology films] are uneven, usually there’s a different director doing each segment. It’s rare to see one that’s all one director’s work.”
Anderson has the idea to follow this structure, telling multiple stories of dogs, we suppose, tied around a common theme. What that theme is, we don’t know but given his previous work, love and family are sure to come into it, and probably death.
Speaking of death, it may be worrying that this film will be about dogs. He has a habit of being quite cruel to pooches, so much so that the New Yorker wrote a whole article on the topic. They make some fair enough points too. Usually you can rely on the dog surviving a film. Not so with Anderson who has killed off more than one by gruesome means. An arrow in ‘Moonrise Kingdom’, a car in ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’. In ‘The Life Aquatic’ Jeff Goldblum is quite cruel to a three-legged friend. Journalists all over have noticed this and Anderson has acknowledged it may not be in his best interests, speaking at Cannes film festival.
“Well, I’ve killed dogs before in my work and it never goes over that lightly.”
Maybe he hates animals in general. Afterall, in his most recent and most successful film ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ he splatters a cat.
However the film turns out, we know one thing for sure. It’s going to be colourful and it’s damn well going to be symmetrical.