A very personal film about the death of her rat terrier, Lolabelle, the film is a personal essay that explores themes of love, death and language. The director’s voice weaves together stories of Lolabelle, her mother, childhood fantasies, political and philosophical theories in a seamless stream. The visual language spans animation, home movies from the artist’s childhood, layered imagery and high speed text animation.
Running throughout the film is Anderson’s signature music in works for solo violin, quartets, songs, and ambient electronics. The central theme of the film is the bardo, the forty nine day period after death in which identity is shredded and the consciousness prepares to enter another life form.
While Anderson has been on a feature film hiatus she has not been idle in the intervening years. Married to the late musician Lou Reed, Anderson established a name for herself as an artist and musician in the 1970s and 80s New York avant garde scene and has carried out a constant stream of interesting projects over the intervening years including an album, Homeland produced together with Reed in 2010 and another canine inspired project, a concert performed outside the Sydney Opera House, with some of the music pitched to be able to be heard only by dogs in a concert titled Music for Dogs.
Anderson refers to the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the works of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard as the underpinnings of her film which might easily come off as pretentious if not for her charming style and sense of humour that keeps this medication on the meaning of life and coming to terms with death both light and ephemeral. Snatches of childhood memories mix with stories like a hiking trip when Lolabelle nearly met an untimely end when a bird of prey tried to swoop down and carry off the small dog.
Other themes include the 9/11 attack in New York and the subsequent security state that has grown up in its wake with the USA spying on everyone globally and what this means for our way of life. But there is also an element of meditation on what this piecing together of emails, images and random bits of information can mean for story-telling and the role of the artist in the post-9/11 world.
Definitely not main-stream fare this film offers musings on a wide range of thoughts and impressions rather than a philosophical analysis. As Anderson says in a statement “As an artist I have made music, paintings, installations, sculpture, and theater. But most of all I am a storyteller.” It is not until the final frames of the film when the music of her late husband and creative partner Lou Reed who died in 2013 plays with Turning Time Around that the revelation that this complex story about the life and death of Lolabelle is probably also a way for Anderson to come to terms with the death of her husband.
Credits:
Death of a Dog (USA)
Directed by Laurie Anderson
Cast: Archie, Gatto, Lolabelle, Little Wille, Nitro, Etta. Voice: Laurie Anderson.
