Year of the Dog

I choose to watch this movie over many others for a few reasons, first of all, the cover really reminded me of Juno, which I love, the slogan "Has the world left you a stray?" implied many existencialisms that put right next to the cute picture of that lovely dog, just seem too much for me to ignore. 

The movie is tagged as a comedy-drama, and even though I laughed a few times, most of it had me thinking and feeling a bit sad.

I won't get into detail on what exactly happens on the movie, but I do share with you that I loved the purpose of it. 

On the special content of the movie, director Mike White explains how anyone of us, regular people, "the guy next door", the friend of a friend, or so, are capable of incurring in inocent actions, that could lead us to scenarios that seen from a third person, and on the large scale, seem to be the actions of a manic, a shizophrenic, a psycho, or someone completely naive, or irrational... or ,please complete the sentence with the adjective of your choice _____________.

It's when this kind of situations happen, that we ask ourselves "what the heck was this girl thinking?", "how could that guy do something like that?" At the end of the day, we are only humans, and judging someone else by their actions, can bring long and complicated moral debates, in which circumstances and contexts, do weight as much as actions.

Mike White came up with the idea of sharing the story of a friendly and mannered woman, whose loyal friend and faithful companion, a dog called Pencil, leads her into drastic actions... Yes I know, it sound a lot like commercial movie summary, but it actually works!

I must confess that at a point of the story, I did find myself wondering if the poor woman had already lost it. Yes, me! Me a person who loves her dog as a child, as part of her family, and who can not imagine how it would be like when that precious "Cesare Cachorribiri" reaches his final day, me who likes to avoid eating meat, and who feels awful when accidentally stepping on and crushing innocent ants and worms that walk by the same streets as I do. Shame on me. It then hit me that me, who has so many things in common with the tormented Peggy , had just - secretly -  judged and jotted down this lady, that one fine day decided to fight for her ideas. 

Rude awakening.

It was a true reminder of how us humans, are usually not totally dark or black, neither totally white of pure, but rather gray