Photo: Fabio Lovino/20th Century Studios/Everett Collection
We humans fixate a lot, especially nowadays, on our own eradication. There are many social, political, planetary, even biological reasons for this, but it’s also reinforced by the cataclysmic visions we regularly endure in our cultural products. For years, we’ve been inundated with movies in which cities and planets are annihilated, or almost annihilated, or recently annihilated, so much so that we’re now sort of numb to the devastation. As Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars began, and I saw those familiar images of burnt buildings, ruined cities, and charred skeletons, I was filled not with dread or anticipation or even sadness but a kind of dull exhaustion. Not this again, I thought.
For all my initial skepticism, however, much of the first half of The Dog Stars held my attention. Based on Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, it takes place sometime in the not-so-distant future, after a plague and the resulting chaos have wiped out almost all of humanity. Hig (Jacob Elordi), a former mechanic still mourning the loss of his wife and unborn child back in the mid-2030s, lives on a small, abandoned airport, his only human companion Bangley (Josh Brolin), a grizzled survivalist and former Marine. Accompanied by his loyal dog Jasper, Hig flies a small Cessna over the forests and mountains of Colorado, touching down on what used to be Denver for dwindling supplies, as well as a nearby community of Mennonites who have managed to remain together, even though illness is slowly taking them down as well.
When he’s in the skies, Hig takes in the majestic landscape around him, hovering in denial over the reality on the ground. Though mired in grief, he remains a dreamer, curious about what’s out there and hanging onto his last vestiges of kindness and maybe even to a sense that the world can be fixed. By contrast, Bangley, who refers to any and all strangers as “roaches,” is pure suspicion and rage. “All the years we’ve been out here, when has offering help made us safer?” he asks Hig. “This world fits you,” Hig responds. “Wake up, defend, survive. You like this shit.”
Elordi’s soft-spoken performance, paired with his delicate and awkward features, provides a nice contrast with Brolin’s tree-stump obduracy. So long as Scott maintains this mood of hesitant survival – this sense of two men stuck in an indeterminate in-between that might be all they will ever have – he’s on reasonably solid ground. When Hig strays off in his plane and chances upon another pair of survivors, former medical student Cema (Margaret Qualley) and her gruff father (Guy Pearce), we see the same dynamic at play between them as well. These differing approaches to the world don’t really need an apocalypse to make sense; it’s a universal, historic conflict, between a youthful openness to the world and a weary distrust. (Think The Road, but not nearly as good.)
I can’t help but wonder what the younger Ridley Scott might have made of this material. Scott the aesthete, the creator of indelible images and ethereal moods who was unafraid to linger in beauty, even when that beauty was corrupted. Blade Runner, let’s not forget, is also about a ruined future world. So too Alien, with its cruel interstellar intimacy, its metallic shadows and gooey whites. Scott’s painterly care with these worlds wasn’t ironic, but Romantic; something about the fearsome, post-human immensity of these spaces clearly inspired him. (See also: 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Black Rain, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, hell, even White Squall.) The films were richer as a result, edging us towards mortal epiphanies: His characters were trapped in realities that didn’t care for them, and so were we.
I mention all this because, for all of Scott’s mastery of mood, The Dog Stars feels fundamentally hollow. The aforementioned contrast between Hig and Bangley is interesting, but the characters never quite transcend their outlines; they’re like ideas looking for people. Especially in a world where we’ve already gotten endless post-apocalyptic visions, from any number of zombie flicks to George Miller’s gonzo Mad Max action operas, we need something. Visual style isn’t just a frill; it’s how cinema reveals its soul, and The Dog Stars could have used a blast of that old-time aestheticism. As it is, the film has lovely settings, but its visual appeal is mostly functional. It never takes our breath away, even when Hig is flying above the world. The Ridley Scott of yore would not have squandered such an opportunity. (That Ridley Scott hasn’t entirely gone away. The Last Duel was only a few years ago.)
I was unfamiliar with Heller’s novel when I saw the film, but I did read it afterwards out of curiosity. Scott and screenwriter Mark E. Smith have certainly taken their liberties, which they should, but they also haven’t figured out a cinematic corollary for the level of psychological depth that Heller delivers through his fragmented, stream-of-consciousness prose. That distinguishes the novel, but it exposes a void in the film. Without the richness of such detail, the characters are left with not much to do. That might also explain the movie’s attempts to supercharge its few action sequences, as if the filmmakers realized belatedly that a sad book without much incident wasn’t exactly prime summer studio release fodder.
Heller’s novel came years before COVID, but it contains some impressively prophetic passages, particularly in its references to how the pandemic spread. The film goes for even further relevancy, taking its dynamic of suspicion vs. curiosity and adding a truly bizarre, late-breaking climax which I won’t give away other than to say that it’s all about the psychotic perils of nostalgia, about how some people in extreme circumstances find suicidal solace in bygone eras and “the way it used to be.” It’s an idea, though not a new one: Danny Boyle did it better in 28 Years Later, as did Bong Joon-ho in Snowpiercer. Those directors learned a lot from Ridley Scott, and I wonder what Ridley Scott might have learned from them. Still, in the interests of not dwelling too much more on the past, I will simply add that I’m happy this director, at age 88, continues to churn out movies, and I look forward to whatever comes next.
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