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The Dog Stars is Ridley Scott at His Most Introspective
Ridley Scott is an odd filmmaker to advocate for as an auteur. There is not a direct thematic throughline in his filmography. Even as far as commercial filmmaker goes, his visual stylings are especially anonymous. Napoleon, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down share little if any cinematic DNA. That lack of a defining perspective has allowed Ridley to operate as a bit of a corporate weapon. With three best director nominations at the Academy Awards, it’s not like the English filmmaker lacks accolades. He certainly gets all the financing he could ever ask for. Every film from him since The Counselor has heralded a budget of at least $50 million.
Maybe the most cohesive corridor of Ridley’s career comes in the late 90s-2000s with prestige driven awards plays from 1492: Conquest of Paradise to Robin Hood. There are consistent stylistic choices like overbearing scores, an overly simple perspective on history highlighting the war on terror, and a rather intense pace of play that comes across like a more accessible pastiche of Ridley’s late brother, Tony Scott. Tony was an expressionist filmmaker who managed to operate with freedom, combining maximalist violence and a humanistic worldview to convey an incredibly unique and overwhelming experiences. Ridley’s attempt at the run-and-gun methodology of filming that Tony made popular can certainly be perceived as cynical especially when compared to the gorgeous imagery conceived of early in his career. The Dog Stars certainly does not hold a candle to the visual stylings of films like Legend or Blade Runner. If one considers Ridley to still be an artist rather than a cog in the Hollywood machine, his output reads as an act of desperation to remain unfeeling. Stay in your sniper position. Take another recon lap. Leave the world behind and refuse to engage with its remnants.
The Scott family and the passing of Ridley’s brothers are absolutely crucial to the subtext of The Dog Stars. In 1980, the eldest of the three Scott brothers, Frank, passed away from skin cancer at the age of 44. In 2012, Tony committed suicide by jumping off the Vincent Thomas Bridge. In 2014, Ridley would later confirm earlier reports that Tony had been fighting a lengthy battle with cancer before his passing. Both of Ridley’s siblings had their life functionally taken by cancer, and in comparison to the film’s flu-like disease, it would be disingenuous and frankly in poor taste to consider it a direct metaphor for Ridley’s experience, but that context is ripe on the vine. Ridley does not shy away from talking about how much he misses Tony, and The Dog Stars is not afraid to admit that it holds mountains of grief within it.
Peter Heller’s novel is an attractive piece of adaptation because it is such a natural extension of an apocalypse. There are no zombies or clickers, just broken pockets of humanity brought on by a flu-like pandemic; thankfully, the film actively pulls away from being about the height Covid-19 Pandemic by setting itself in time after the disease has destroyed most of society. The film seeks to move on from that conflict. Hig (Jacob Elordi) and Bangley (Josh Brolin) are purveyors of death, living amongst burnt corpses and executing anybody that dares stumble upon their compound. When murder is committed so casually, it creates a coldness and emotional distance from the act that is visualized by Bangley’s love for his sniper tower and scoped rifles.
Hig’s entire relationship to the world around him comes from his relationship to death, and that defines that haunting texture of the film. He never overtly faults Bangley for Jasper’s death because he knows he got distracted on recon. Melissa (Sai Bennett), Hig’s deceased wife, contracted the flu-like disease and died at the hand of Hig, who actively pulled the plug on her ventilator to end her suffering. Ridley’s film despises agony despite Hig suffering through every waking moment. That is the central question of the film. How do we live when death and torment are so pervasive? Ridley and Hig desire a reason to keep on going.
Erik Messerschmidt is one of the best digital cinematographers working today, and you would be right to question his competency given the out of context shots presented in the trailer. Within the context of the film, his work feels in line with the tone of the docu-drama. The film opens with a gorgeous shot of a mountain side as Hozier’s soft and effervescent vocals begin, presenting a beautiful dichotomy of natural beauty as the beginning and end of being a real person. Humanity is shrouded in darkness while nature is presented as a source of catharsis. His lens into the world feels appropriately dingy for a 2035 riddled with disease and factions that have fallen away from any semblance of humanity.
Already in development on a Treasure Planet film with Hugh Jackman, Ridley Scott will keep working. He will likely keep making films until the day he leaves this Earth, but The Dog Stars feels like a final film — a cinematic admission of feelings from a clinical sniper in a similar way to David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, an expression of grief from a filmmaker grappling with the inability to interact with humanity. The Dog Stars finds its reason to keep on existing through doing the work. By continuing to exist, life can be worth it in its tangents and oddities. That view from the cockpit of the by-plane is just too beautiful to forgo.
I ranked every Ridley Scott film over on Letterboxd.
