Wiener-Dog is a perfectly normal, uninspiring canine who, over the course of 88 minutes, meets four different protagonists, each successively older than the last – Remi, Brandon (Kieran Culkin), Dave (Danny Devito) and Nana (Ellen Burstyn). They are all either facing or have faced death and are experiencing the consequences of it. In death’s wake, each are forced to reflect on their regrets and failures, and each come to different conclusions on how their lives should progress. Each story follows the line of screenwriter Dave’s formula for plot line success – “What If… Then What?” And that by and large is the essence of every story – What if a boy with cancer was given a pet dog?; What if a young woman with a dog met an old crush?; What if an middle-aged, failed professor was told he was on his last legs?; And what if an OAP was visited by her desperate and pleading granddaughter?
Meanwhile, the wiener-dog, under different guises, brings pure, hedonistic joy to each of the characters at times when they need it – to distract them, to provide comfort, or even to give them a means to an end. More than this, however, it enforces the more unorthodox sermon that Solondz preaches – one of pure nihilism; or rather, that life and death really are devoid of worth and if that’s true, then nothing has any meaning whatsoever. It’s from this line of thinking that the film finds it’s pure randomness, the theme that has turned off swathes of audience members.
Solondz plays with us, mocks us – he’ll have us watch a minutes-long tracking shot of festering diarrhoea faeces; or an awkward performance of a depressed mariachi band; or a Damian Hirst-despising “interactive artist” called Fantasy. These moments fail to tie into any plot lines as seamlessly as they should, and instead jar the audience. Solondz is not trying to pass this off as inherently artistic - rather, he is anti art, anti meaning. It is almost Dadaist in quality, right down to the very ending when our beloved wiener-dog is violently run over, repeatedly, his innards staining the tarmac.
It’s crass, disturbing and unfair to an audience who has had to sit through some of the more awkward points (the first story is particularly unpolished). Worse, it’s underlying nihilistic thought process is at odds with the four stories, where Solondz gives us moments of tenderness and humanity. He reels us in, teasing the order and compassion of a more typical drama, then snatches them away to give us a non-sequitur, jeering all the while. If Solondz had Twitter, he'd be a troll.
For all of that dizzying tomfoolery, however, the film is certainly funny. Even without the erratic surrealism, Wiener-Dog extracts humour from it’s excellent cast. Devito, Culkin, Burstyn and Greta Gerwig (playing Dawn) are all grounded, dry and effortless in their comedy. They are the highs of a film that seeks to confuse and frustrate. Despite the characters they portray resorting to the apathy that Solondz promotes, the actors grant them enough humanity to make them empathetic.
The film is neither as dramatic nor perfect as perhaps it should be, but then, it isn't really aiming for that. Wiener-Dog is designed to be divisive, controversial and shocking in order to have us let go of any sense of meaning or art. So if you’re conflicted by the random intermission, the casual planned terrorist attack or the bloody dog vomit and are unsure what to feel, consider taking a leaf from Todd Solondz’ book and deciding that it doesn’t matter anyway.
