‘Isle of Dogs’ on HBO: Is This Getting Wes Anderson His First Oscar?

For a director who’s been so decidedly and intentionally offbeat for his entire career, Wes Anderson sure does seem to be inching closer and closer to that most insider-y of industry designations: an Academy Award. As a feature film director for over 20 years, he’s made movies from Bottle Rocket and Rushmore to The Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Grand Budapest Hotel. And while his early career was for the most part ignored by Oscar types, recent years have seen a turnaround. This year, with the animated feature Isle of Dogs — which premieres on HBO December 22 — he stands his best chance yet at ascending to the Oscar stage in whatever overly-tailored tuxedo he’s chosen to wear that night.

For a long time, Anderson played the Oscar also-ran. Despite rave reviews and a bucket of precursor awards for Bill Murray, Rushmore ended up getting no nominations at all. The Royal Tenenbaums, despite being one of the best movies of a very good year, got merely a screenplay nod for Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson. The Life Aquatic? Nope. The Darjeeling Limited? No.

Anderson returned in 2009 with the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox, and despite the Oscars sometimes shying away from new and exciting voices in animation, Anderson was nominated for Best Animated feature. Unfortunately, that was the year of Pixar’s Up, which was nominated for Best Picture and overall an awards sensation. His follow-up, Moonrise Kingdom, got a LOT of awards buzz that year, including the Gotham Awards win for Best Film, but ultimately was relegated to a mere Screenplay nomination.

Then came The Grand Budapest Hotel, a film that merged Anderson’s meticulous world-building with a world that felt closer to Oscar’s wheelhouse than any of deep-sea or ruined-New York environs he’d used before. This paid off to the tune of nine nominations and four wins — for costumes, production design, makeup, and score — but none for Anderson specifically.

And now he’s back with another animated contender — Isle of Dogs, the critically acclaimed (89% on Rotten Tomatoes) but not un-controversial film that faces a much less daunting field of animated contenders. For one thing, the field is awash with sequels, with the Academy has historically been less inclined towards (unless you’re a Toy Story movie). A quick look at the competish:

• The Incredibles 2, Pixar’s entry, which will look to test that sequels theory. Its reviews were STELLAR.
• Wreck-It Ralph 2, which might overcome the sequel thing because it’s so much bigger (and better) than the original.
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, an excellent movie that might fall prey to the Academy’s historical aversion to superhero movies (Black Panther, we assume, being the exception).
• Mirai, this year’s entry from the GKids studio that has racked up a bunch of nominations but no wins yet.

Isle of Dogs is the best-placed original animated film in this field. It’s only problem is that Anderson’s made a movie that feels really tone-deaf about race at a time when that’s a big problem. The story is about a fictional near-future where dogs have been banished to an island in Japan. Amid this strife, one boy looks for his dog, Spots, on the island of dogs. Meanwhile, a young (white, American) girl agitates for the freedom of all dogs.

The idea that Anderson — already a director who’s made one movie, The Darjeeling Limited, that was so much about cultural tourism that it was accused of being cultural tourism — would set a movie in Japan, have all the dogs speak English, and have the crusading savior be a young, white American girl is almost mind-boggling. That he adds to the discomfort by having the rest of the Japanese ensemble speak in unsubtitled Japanese is the cherry on top. Critics from the L.A. Times‘ Justin Chang to Vulture’s Emily Yoshida have called the film out for appropriation and erasure, whether conscious on Anderson’s part or not.

The choice for Oscar voters is likely going to come down to a controversial Wes Anderson movie or to get over their sequel-phobia (or superhero-phobia) and pick something else. Either way, Isle of Dogs has its own uphill battle ahead of it.

Where to stream Isle of Dogs