‘Black Dog’ Review: Poetic Rehabilitation Drama Has Compassion For Man and Man’s Best Friend  Led By an Extraordinary Eddie Peng

Major controversies surrounded the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games while they occurred, but it was only after they came to a close that the organisers were found to have been involved in the violation of human rights; the forced displacement of residents to make way for the games, cited as “Olympics-related redevelopment.” Guan Hu’s Un Certain Regard recipient Black Dog, a carefully measured drama of maturity and profound compassion, begins its tale 51 days before the games, at the edge of the Gobi Desert but at the epicentre of social and cultural disenfranchisement.

Black Dog opens with a wide desert vista. This isn’t a golden desert, the likes you’d find in Lawrence of Arabia, but a shade of sun-bleached grey, like the stereotypical vibrancy of paradise has been etiolated. This washed out vista is soon bisected by a scourge of wild dogs, who overturn a bus carrying our protagonist Lang (Eddie Peng). It would be a disservice to the character just to simply state he is an ex-con returning to his hometown, because the character of Lang is one of 2024 cinema’s finest creations: A stoic but enigmatic man whose manslaughter crime doesn’t define him anymore than his past career as a rockstar does. It is instead the tribulations of attempting to live a simple life that seems to have hollowed him. Each time the emotionally vacant Lang seems to bubble up with humour or warmth in the hour of the picture, he is shut down. Sometimes this is more figuratively, by the presence of the antagonist of the picture, Butcher Hu, and sometimes literally, as he is told to stop smiling by a bureaucrat. 

This dichotomy of two sides is an ever-present ideology in Black Dog as Lang descends upon his hometown – one still bustling with people living their lives – and sees that it is set for demolition. The Olympics logo looms silently over the town, their iconic rings and slogan “live the dream” plastered over decaying walls, decaying dreams. But Hu presents this juxtaposition most aptly within the relationship that flourishes between Lang and the titular canine, of whom won the Palm Dog’s Grand Jury Prize at 2024’s Cannes Film Festival. Their relationship begins frostily, with Lang attempting to capture the supposedly rabid animal, of which there is a ¥1000 bounty for. Lang captures the jet-black whippet (played by Xiao Xin) intending to reap the reward but after the two spend an evening trapped together on a cold desert night, man and his best friend heal their metaphorical wounds. 

The town, named Chixia Town in a brief radio broadcast, is overrun by dogs. With Lang having returned from prison, he is mandated by his probation officer to assist in the rounding up of dogs but Lang is deliberately ineffective at this and is soon dismissed from the task. The location chosen for Chixia Town is one of the many highlights of the picture, as production designer Hugo Tingxiao’s dilapidated suburbs and abandoned homes add a real palpable sense of the urban decay that has occurred. What makes Black Dog special, and even occasionally subversive, is that the moral erosion that could exist in a village portrayed as almost dystopian, is never used as a simple justification within Hu’s depiction of his characters. Butcher Hu, uncle of the deceased victim, is not a caricature of a villain. He is rightfully upset that Lang is back and threatens him, but each instance of conflict is dispelled quickly. Even when the picture can depict the character as something sinister, it pivots as a reminder that even in film, we are mostly good people even after the pain of loss.

This is a common aspect within Black Dog. The people around the town are disenfranchised with the mechanics of their world but rarely at each other. They are supportive of each other; the societal framework is rock solid in comparison to the structural decomposition at the hands of the Olympics redevelopment. They provide free food to Lang and meat for the lone lion that inhabits the Zoo that Lang’s alcoholic father is unable to keep up with. This is Hu’s version of societal rebirth: the once imprisoned Lang and the once imprisoned dog become rehabilitated through seceding to each other emotionally.

Peng is extraordinary as Lang in a role that is a bold departure from his career thus far. The Taiwanese actor is known for his more bombastic populist work, but Peng’s performance is of remarkable subtlety in Black Dog. He expresses through gestures rather than dialogue – Peng has perhaps 15 lines the whole picture – and his physicality lends itself to that of a silent film, his gesticulations not in grand set pieces like that of Harold Lloyd in Safety Last but more akin to the theatricality of a Penn and Teller piece, the silent magic of the latter a specific comparison point.

Guan Hu’s Black Dog is a powerful, poetic picture, one in which the vast splendour of Gai Weizhe’s gorgeous cinematography is barely trumped by Hu’s corporeal characters amidst a towering performance from Eddie Peng. There is no better summation of the film than with Peng adopting Xiao Xin, the titular dog after production ended, having developed such a strong bond throughout. A stirring and soulful rendition of survival in a broken society, where we can only succeed when our fellow man, his best friend and nature work in tandem.

Grade: A

Black Dog world premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and recently screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It will be released in the U.S. by The Forge.