Animal is a Language
Comparative Analysis of Dogtooth and Attenberg
As Galt states in her essay The Animal Logic of Contemporary Greek Cinema, in Greek films such as Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009) and Attenberg (Tsangari, 2010), “animality is a key way in which these films articulate subjectivity... and social relations” (Galt, 7). Despite limited appearance of real creatures in the diegeses, animals have constituted a metaphorical language throughout both of the films, speaking reflexively about the human characters and uninhibitedly about their relations. Through metaphors of animality come the interplay between subtleties in character dynamics that go beyond normative human interaction and developments of the protagonists’ independence; thus, in these two films, animetaphor itself provides a language for change in human relationality and subjectivity beyond normativities without speaking.
Fig. 1 Two daughters dancing in Dogtooth
In both films, there is a pair of intimate girls that often dress similarly and move in sync, of whom the ostensibly mirroring dynamics between characters can be differentiated by the animetaphor hinted in other scenes. In Dogtooth, the synchronization of movement between the elder daughter and her sister is a result of conscious mimicry. At their mother’s birthday party, the two girls, both in dresses and white shoes, dance mechanically to celebrate (Fig. 1). The younger daughter is revealed to be a follower as she peeks at the elder one for next dancing movement. This scene is emblematic of their relationship and the animetaphor as the younger daughter always goes after the elder one, similar to a dog in training that can be prophesied by its next stage. Earlier, while the dog trainer tries to explain different stages of dog training, two pictures of presumably the same black dog, with one leaning more forward and behaving more actively, are juxtaposed in long shot twice in form of drawings and photos (Fig. 2-3). Both in the dog training and girl dancing scene, the similarity in visual appearances and slight difference in behavior by lapse cohere, making it plausible to see the elder daughter in a more advanced stage than the younger one as she develops her agency and individuality faster through contact with more external influence.
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Comparatively, in Attenberg, the harmony in the two girls’ actions is more tacit, manifested through several unmotivated scenes in which Marina and her best friend Bella, in same-style dresses, march in similar animal-like movements. Quoting from Galt, “the bonds of their relationship almost entirely enacted through bodily identification with avian and simian creatures”(Galt, 16). As these scenes progress within the film, their movement intensities in animality and harmony as it gradually shifts from identical to complementary(Fig. 4-7), which corresponds to the development of their intimate relationship as Marina gets more acquainted with intimacy. In the film’s opening scene, Bella teaches Marina how to act in an intimate situation through kissing with their mouths wide open (Fig. 8). Such interaction falls “outside the spaces of hetero or homo normativities”(Galt, 20) and goes beyond human convention of kissing, “it is almost as if Marina is trying to eat large segments of birdseed out of Bella’s mouth” (Felton). In fact, it provides more insight into their relationship if treating this scene as birds feeding activity. Bella, someone more experienced with intimate relationship, feeds her knowledge to her friend, as how birds communicate and share by mouth. Therefore, in both films, character relationality goes beyond sibling or friend normativities and is “encoded in gestural movements”(Galt, 16) of animetaphor potential.
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Fig. 8 Marina and Bella interacting with mouth wide open in Attenberg
“For Lippit, the animetaphor is deeply embedded in cinema’s ontology and its semiotics, always promising an affective force that transports the spectator out of the limits of language.” (Galt, 18) Instead of direct message by words, both lms deploy interscenic montage to parallel human characters with animal metaphors, insinuating their substantial transformations and foreshadowing key plot turns later. In Dogtooth, the elder daughter bends forward to eavesdrop on her mother’s call with the father for more external information (Fig.9), before it cuts to a black dog in its stage two training relentlessly barking in a similar posture and similar frame composition (Fig.10). Such montage of these two shots not only cohere visually because of the similar composition, but also conceptually parallel the elder daughter, whose curiosity about the outside world is triggered after Christina’s visit, with a dog in training. The next scene is cut to a tight medium shot of the father handling water bottles in the open car trunk (Fig. 11), which resembles an open dog mouth and coincides to be where the elder daughter decides to hide at the end of the lm. In Attenberg, Marina’s coming-of-age transformation towards her father’s disease is bridged with cross-species of animetaphors through montage. Earlier in the lm, Marina and father imitate apes (Fig.12) after watching documentary about mutual understanding between this species (Fig.13). Later, nearer to her father’s death, she wordlessly and closely pants with him while wearing surgical masks in the hospital (Fig.14). It cuts to two grebes snuggled up (Fig.15) in a documentary about their life away from elders with others of their age while Marina imitates the grebe behavior alone (Fig.16). This natural theme of farewell to elders and mating activities identifies Marina “closely with animals to speak otherwise”(Galt, 15). Thus, through montage, human characters’ mental transformation is translated into animal language and visualized by animetaphors.
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Fig. 11 The father handling water bottles at an open car trunk in Dogtooth
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Fig. 16 Marina imitating grebe alone in Attenberg
According to Galt, “human relationality and subtle changes in affect can only be expressed through animal gestures, not because these are natural but precisely because they are not”(Galt, 18). In Dogtooth and Attenberg, animetaphors empower character relationality that go beyond human normativities to be spoken about by cinematic language instead of words, and the interscenic montage bridges human characters’ daily movement with animals’ natural behavior both visually and conceptually. As the name of Attenberg shows, everyone is in their own stage or version in the reexive norms of animality, on their own way to individuality and socialization.
Works Cited
Felton, Patrick (2012) “Home Video Hovel——Attenberg”, Battleship Pretension, http://battleshippretensioncom/?p=7529, date accessed 22 April 2016.
Galt, Rosalind. The Animal Logic of Contemporary Greek Cinema. Framework 58, Nos. 1&2, Spring/Fall 2017, pp. 7-29.
Lanthimos, Yorgos, director. Dogtooth. Feelgood Entertainment, 2009. Psaras, Marios. Dogtooth: Of Narrativity. The Queer Greek Weird Wave. Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2016. pp. 63-90.
Psaras, Marios. Attenberg: Of (Dis-)Orientation. The Queer Greek Weird Wave. Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2016. pp. 123-154.
Tsangari, Athina Rachel, director. Attenberg. Greece, 2010.
