A wave of what is known uninspiringly as “hopecore” is sweeping through theatres. At surface level these films inspire hope, turning often apocalyptic worlds on their head – Project Hail Mary, Mickey 17, Disclosure Day, to name afew. If you dig alittle deeper, you usually only find some half-baked ideas about how being nice to one another would solve all the world’s ills. This week, it’s Ridley Scott’s turn to add to this growing vibe shift with The Dog Stars. The year is 2035 and avirus has wiped out most of humanity, leaving only afew gruff countrymen – (Josh Brolin as Bangley and Guy Pearce as Pops) – and two of the most gorgeous people on earth (Jacob Elordi as Hig and Margaret Qualley asCima).
Since Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi has successfully broken free from his typecasting as the heartbreaker, but now he seems to have found himself in anew box. Like the Creature in Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff, Hig is one of the world’s underdogs. Amechanic of simple means, who before the virus spent his free time “kissing my wife and playing with my dog” – yes this is alegitimate line from the film. Now Hig flies his banged up Cessna with his faithful dog Jasper, searching the abandoned city of Denver for supplies, visiting the hillside mennonite community and returning to drink whiskey and gamble with his survival partner Bangley. But when Jasper is killed by roaming scavengers, Hig has nothing keeping him with the ranting paranoid prepper Bangley, and goes in search of another life or adramatic death.
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Scott’s latest movie is an often saccharine blend of values, lamenting the now extinct vaccine, the need for human connection and an urge to value the small things that make up the good life (a starry sky, an iPod classic, pancakes with marshmallow sprinkles). But there are also some incredibly dark scenes where danger comes mainly in the form of large groups of other humans. Unlike the beautiful, weatherbeaten hard-working individuals like Hig, Bangley, Cima and Pops, their attacks are often monosyllabic hordes, either heavily tattooed and bareskinned or covered in some sort of tribal warpaint, bringing screaming chaos and unnecessary violence wherever they go. Although Bangley’s insular nature is acontentious point between him and Hig, it seems understandable when very few survivors have kept their humanity. But Scott wants to remind us there are those that will, you might just have to risk your life afew times to findthem.
All of this might have been alot easier to make sense of if it weren’t for the very constant and distracting product placement, including abox of Sprite (the mennonite children’s favourite vice), Coca Cola bottles (Bangley’s drug of choice), Bulleit Bourbon for male bonding time between Hig and Pops and most bizarrely acopy of David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest’ sitting between abox of grenades and an aviation kit. Alongside the hokey spirituality (a donkey leading Hig to Cima and his belief that his dog’s spirit is looking down on him from the stars), The Dog Stars really is just ajumble of sentimentality and nostalgia for Americana with afew intense action sequences. All Ican make out from Scott’s latest is that we need to enjoy what we have while we have it – mainly Coca Cola, whiskey and streaming music – and search for your people when the hard times come. Iguess that’s all you can expect from amovie that insists on beginning and ending with the same Hozier track.