The ultimate message may be a little fuzzy, but Mundruczó has crafted a incredibly cinematic canine parable that remains gripping and inventive from its nose to its tail.
White God(Fehér Isten)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Hungary, Germany, Sweden · 2014
Rated R · 2h 1m
Director Kornél Mundruczó
Starring Zsófia Psotta, Luke, Body, Sándor Zsótér
Genre Drama
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This dark, surreal drama follows 13-year-old Lili and her dog Hagen, both of whom face neglect throughout their lives. When Lili is forced to get rid of Hagen, both Lili and Hagen deal with their harsh situations in life and try to find each other again, resulting in a revolution of mistreated dogs.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Time Out London by Cath Clarke
If it wasn’t so violent, the simplicity of the metaphor – how the abused and outcast will rise up – would work for young audiences. And you won’t beat it for dog acting.
Superbly acted allegorical drama with a climax that is not only breathtakingly exciting but flawlessly handled.
Not merely a story of interspecies hierarchy, then, White God also puts forward a simple but elegant metaphor for racial and class oppression, as the outcast (or even outcaste) masses, sidelined in favor of the elite few, band together to assert their collective strength.
Who let the dogs out? This is Homeward Bound: The Incredibly Harrowing Journey, with the feelgood payoff arriving after many feel-shit sequences. Well worth it, though.
Slant Magazine by Jesse Cataldo
It affects a general air of artistically inclined realism, but it's mostly concerned with building tension via a steady accumulation of flatly conceived misery.
Overall a triumphantly idiosyncratic film with smarts and visceral impact in equal measure.
The Telegraph by Mike McCahill
A social conscience movie with real cinematic bite.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
White God works as an ambiguous satire of power relations generally: eventually the lower orders will rise up. The film has a flair and a bite which I have found lacking in Mundruczó's earlier films.
The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Dalton
The premise of this Hungarian/German/Swedish co-production is solid, even if the execution feels a little slack and the running time too long.
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