(courtesy IMP Awards)
When I read The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, the novel on which the great Ridley Scott’s latest movie is based, I was struck by how forcefully hope sat at the centre of a post-apocalyptic tale of a world brought to its civilisational knees by a virus that wipes almost all of humanity.
The genre, which has become thrillingly popular in the last couple of decades, driven no doubt by a gathering sense that the world is ending in slow motion, has always been very good at making the scariest of nightmares feel the most authentic of realities, and in its quest to scare complacency and contentment out of us, it has often supersized the very worst parts of human behaviour, with hope being one of the casualties because how scary is a sense that things could get better?
But if you know people, you will have noticed that we possess a peculiarly stubborn ability to tenaciously hang in there when by rights we should be well and truly evolutionarily down for the count, and that by extension, hope is not such an outlandish idea after all.
It’s certainly on full display, well eventually at least, in Scott’s adaptation of Heller’s decade-old work, which takes us to a remote airfield deep in the mountains and meadows of Colorado where two wholly disparate men, ex-mechanic Hig (Jacob Elordi) and grizzle military veteran Bangley (Josh Brolin) have carved out a precarious existence.
Along with Hig’s much loved dog Jasper, they are surviving, and that is the key word here in a world which doesn’t allow for much in the way of superfluous existential meanderings, their lives only threatened by occasional raiding parties and trespassers who are dispatched without any questions being asked, by Bangley who relies on Hig’s recon flights each day to spot any looming threats.
Their world hangs by a thread but in a world where life has ceased altogether for many people, that’s a major achievement and it’s only you’d assume no one would want to tinker with or risk upsetting in any way.
But Hig is getting itchy feet, still mourning is wife lost some nine years or so earlier, and while he has his reasonably frequent flights into Denver to get supplies of everything from medication to soft drink (soda), his longs to see if there is anything left of the old world, or anything vaguely resembling it (the only group close to this are the Mennonites who live nearby and with whom Hig has a close and caring relationship, a rarity in a world now cruelly and darkly framed by endlessly violent self interest.
It’s a huge gamble but one he feels he has no choice to take, and while he knows it could all end in disaster, he flies off anyway, leaving Bangley behind, hoping that Grand Junction, from which he has heard a repeating message encouraging people to get in touch, might be more sanctuary than threat.
In the course of his travels, he meets ex-med student Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her highly suspicious and gruffly rebuffing dad “Pops”/Jack who’s a former Navy SEAL (Guy Pearce), which leads to unexpected romance and the sense that maybe some beautiful things survive in a very ugly dog-eat-dog world (sorry Jasper but it’s true).
A great deal more happens in The Dog Stars but even with a few high-tension action scenes and a lot of ranging across geography and the treacherous ranges of the human condition which frankly has seen far better days, the film is mostly told with a slow, quiet, nuanced grace, a thoughtfulness that not many post-apocalyptic stories possess.
While it stays firmly eyes-on-the-prize on the raw, touching humanity of Hig’s grief and possible reawakening and those who come along on his journey of rediscovery of what might lie ahead in a world long shorn of possibility, The Dog Stars soars (quite literally with Hig’s plane the centre of much of the narrative momentum).
It’s when it tries to go full modern apocalypse that the film falters.
One of the things that has always confounded this reviewer is how many writers of post-apocalyptic tales seem to forget the basics of what it means to be human; yes, we can ruthlessly violent and sociopathically cruel but that isn’t the whole story and while the end of the world would likely make things massively worse, some of the better angels of our nature would still survive.
When the threats come to Hig and Bangley, and Cima and Pops, they unfortunately come in the form of violently cartoonish mutations of humanity that seem to suggest that many people have forgotten, in just under a decade, which is WELL within living memory, how to be human.
Forget forgetting civilisation which dies quickly on the alter of basic, immediate need; what we’re talking here is the crafting of Big Bads that seem to think that much of what’s left of humanity would become Lord of the Flies-ish tattooed punk ferals or First Nations’ culture-appropriating savages or something out of a 1960’s cult-like cinematic fever dream.
While you could argue they are gripping to watch, and there is a certain fascinating weirdness to them, they are so at odds with what would happen to people in under a decade, attitudinally and resources-wise (where do they get all the material and skills to kit themselves out for a start?), that they turn what could be an affecting story into something of a blockbuster with no brains parody.
It’s when Scott allows them to infiltrate his quietly nuanced and emotionally resonant story of people seeking to not just survive but thrive, challenging though that is in so many ways, that The Dog Stars stumbles and feel like any other half-rate post-apocalyptic story.
Not fatally, though many other critics would like you to think it does, but enough that the spell of Hig and the others slow walk back to hope and possibility, which is everywhere in Heller’s sublimely good novel, and which sits at the heart of The Dog Stars is lost a little.
Again, not enough to ruin things and and by and large, if you focus on the humanity at at its beautifully expressed heart, and glory in the stunning cinematography which plays a key role in bringing the story to life, The Dog Stars is a solid effort which reminds us, and we need reminding heavily right now, that hope and love persist well beyond the end of the world and that while violence and cruel self-interest seem to rule the roost, they have nothing on the capacity of the human spirit to put one foot in front of the other and to keep going in defiance of all the odds.
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