Brutal (spoilers)

I've been a huge fan of Todd Solondz's work since watching Welcome to the Dollhouse in a film class back in college. Since then, I've enjoyed all of his films and his weird, sad, misanthropic view of the world. (My favorite film of his still remains Dark Horse (2011).)

That being said, I KNEW he was going to kill the dog at the end of the movie. I KNEW it would probably get hit by a car or worse. I should also mention I have no problem with animal violence depicted in films because, as it says at the end of every movie, "no animal was harmed in the making of this film." It's just a *beep* movie.

"Wiener-Dog" is about the life of a dachshund, so I was prepared for the death element. And I also knew it would take a dark look at human nature. I was not disappointed. It's a sad film. It almost takes on an anthology format, broken into four "tales." The first one was about a boy who gets his first dog and has a lot of questions about life. There's a depressing monologue by the father about how you have to "break" the dog of its will and get it to submit to you. That made me feel so sad, but it's true. Then we watch the dog get poisoned and diarrhea its guts out. Then it's off to the vet to be put down. A hell of a way to start a movie.

I'm still not sold on Greta Gerwig as Dawn Wiener. She's too pretty and thin to be considered a "loser." Anyway, the second part of the film focuses on her saving the dog from its impending doom while reconnecting with someone from her past. I was surprised Solondz actually gave her a "happy" ending this time around. It's probably the high point of the film. Then comes a playful intermission in which the Ballad of Wiener-Dog is sung and we watch the dog trek across the plains.

At this point, it's unclear whether the dog escaped from its Down Syndrome owners at the end of the second story, or if a new wiener-dog is introduced. At any rate, the second half of the movie is not nearly as strong as the first half. The third story involves Danny DeVito's character as a failed movie director/film professor who's fallen on hard times. (His one hit movie, Apricots! is a direct homage to Woody Allen's "Bananas" -- at least in poster form.) At the end of this particular tale, he straps a bomb to his dog and plans to blow up his school building. It's unclear whether he succeeds (as it cuts to black), and once again, we don't know whether we're following the same dog or a new one.

In the last segment, Ellen Burstyn plays a woman in a retirement home being visited by her granddaughter (Zosia Mamet) and her uncouth boyfriend. The dog is merely in the background (he belongs to the old woman in this one). The granddaughter is asking for money to help support her artist boyfriend, who apparently roboticizes dead animals (a foreshadowing if ever there was one). Afterwards, the old woman has a dream where she is visited by several versions of herself as a young girl, each showing what she would have been like if she made different life choices. It ends with her younger selves welcoming her towards death. Afterwards, she wakes up, calls for her dog, then we see the dog walk into traffic and get run over several times by different cars. Cold, detached, cruel. We cut to a card that reads "6 months later" and then we see the dog immortalized as a taxidermied robot dog that turns its head and barks. Roll end credits.

Wow. You could almost hear the resulting gasp and silence fall over the audience.

I'm not sure what the message of the movie was. I think it was just an excuse to tell four separate tales with a dog in the background. It kind of reminded me of another Solondz anthology movie, Storytelling. I kind of liked it, but it's not as strong as some of his other entries. It definitely has the same tone, though.

Part of the problem for me is that after the second story, I stopped being as invested in the dog because the movie shifted more towards the human character's point of view. I don't know if that was purposeful or not. I'm still not sure whether it's meant to be the same dog in different points during its life (and it's never made clear either). If anything, this film made me never want to own a dog again. It's just too heartbreaking.