KT Last Look : Black Dog (Guan Hu, 2024)
KG reviews one of the finest Chinese films of 2024
Editor’s note:
With so many films to cover and only so many Thursdays and occasional Sundays to publish work, we have come up with a new column for films on their last theatrical legs. This week, Kristian covers the winner of Cannes’ 2024 Prix du Un Certain Regard and Palm Dog Jury Prize, Black Dog.
Black Dog
Guan Hu, 2024
DCP Courtesy: Hi Gloss Entertainment
Classification: MA15+
Screening at Cinema Nova on Wednesday 5 March at 2.40pm. Tickets here.
Words by Kristian Greif
A violent storm has stirred in the desert.
There is no rain or thunder. Just a howling wind that drives cascades of black and grey sand across dunes, and through valleys. It is night-time, and bitterly cold. The faint glow of headlights reveals the wreck of a lone truck lying on its side. Inside the truck’s cabin, a captor and his captee must forego their fraught and hostile engagement, and seek shelter together from the waste…
The captor is Lang Yonghui (Eddie Peng), an ex-convict who has recently returned, on parole, to his hometown of Chixia on the edge of the Gobi Desert. His captee: a troublesome, large, and partly feral black dog (Xin).
It is 2008, and the eve of the Beijing Olympics. A widespread process of modernisation is sweeping across China, and Chixia has been caught in a state of transition. Much of its streetscape is in disrepair and has been marked for demolition. Surrounding the town, and seemingly even encroaching on it, is an apparently endless desert landscape.
With no income and a sick father to support, Lang has reluctantly gained employment in a program tasked with removing the abundance of stray dogs from the town’s decaying and obsolete buildings. It is a grim, almost apocalyptic affair, that sees ex-convicts and social outcasts chase down, cage, and transport feral dogs from urban ruins to a crude industrial facility in the desert. Since he is confined to Chixia by condition of his parole, it is here in this moment of desolation, that Lang must relearn how to live.
Or more aptly, how to live well.
This may seem like a rather mundane directive. It is certainly humble in scope when compared with the typical array of oft repeated cinematic aspirations. Indeed, as a film with a loosely Neo-Western setting, Black Dog resists presenting the familiar tropes of success against all odds, bloody vengeance, and thrilling romance (to name a few). However, the gravity of the story told in the film is of no lesser magnitude than any of these more ‘action-packed’ narrative arcs. Determining how exactly one must live is a profoundly complex and fundamentally existential task, and one that deserves cinematic representation.
At the beginning of Black Dog, Lang has not been living well. His past involvement in the death of another local, the nephew of the Butcher Hu (Hu Xiaoguang), has resulted in a lengthy prison term. Moreover, it has perpetuated a string of violent retaliatory encounters involving Lang, as Butcher Hu and his accomplices seek vengeance for the death.
Lang is materially poor and somewhat socially isolated. His father (the manager of the local zoo) routinely drinks to excess and is acutely ill, while his sister lives far away from Chixia. His way of inhabiting the world around him is characteristically antagonistic and alienated. He rarely speaks and is frequently involved in fights and hostile exchanges. In the past he was a musician, however, he is now either unable or unwilling to play music.
Similarly, the world Lang enters appears to be in a deteriorated and bleak state. The town of Chixia is considerably depressed with many of its residential and public buildings now rendered obsolete and abandoned. As Lang re-familiarises himself with the town’s layout, he passes rows of condemned apartment blocks, the remains of the local Zoo, and most strikingly, an empty and decayed concert hall in which he used to perform. Echoes of this degradation are also found in the social and natural environment of Chixia. Employment is hard to come by and the population is sharply decreasing. Hostility and violence, by contrast, seem all too common and even accepted as part of life. The harsh desert conditions, just outside Chixia’s border, appear capable of raging out of control at any given moment. And, of course, a constantly multiplying population of wild dogs seem to be overrunning parts of the town…
At some point, while navigating this desolate world, Lang forges a bond of kinship with the black dog, and it is through this relationship that the existential drama of the film’s narrative is enacted.
In many ways, this bond is driven by the analogous situations which both Lang and the black dog find themselves in. Both characters are isolated, ostracised by society, and forced by groups of pursuers to live somewhat as fugitives. What’s more, there is something of a ‘feral-ness’, an uncontrollability, in their disposition that is brought about by the harsh world they share. As individuals, they are non-cooperative and anti-social, living as forlorn outcasts in the condemned remains of their town. Fundamentally, it is through the relationship forged with one another that both characters are able to reorient their way of living in, and inhabiting, the world.
Fearing the potential transmission of rabies from the black dog to Lang, both characters are instructed to isolate themselves at Lang's house. Having to care for the dog, Lang finds himself in an unusual position of responsibility that provokes him to reconfigure the ways in which he relates to his environment. From here, a crucial shift in his existential disposition begins to take effect. He starts engaging in restorative and caring acts – looking after his father, rekindling friendships, and tending to the animals still living in the run-down zoo. In doing so, he forges non-hostile relations with different human and non-human characters alike, finding value in them as members of a larger world, of which he is apart. He also refuses to continue working in the program, thereby subtly acting to thwart the processes of aggressive modernisation slowly destroying his local environment
Significantly, in a crucial moment, Lang opts to defy the cycle of violence and retaliation in which he and Butcher Hu are entangled. Through an unprovoked and selfless act of support, aiding Hu after a venomous snake bite, he brings about a reconciliation with his aggressors. This particular moment, as well as Lang’s new disposition toward living, marks a radical defiance of typical cinematic narrative progressions, through which conflict and action are necessary to bring about resolution. Here, cooperation, support and even solidarity between humans, animals, and the world they inhabit, becomes an end, in and of itself.
It is through embracing this new ethics that Lang is able to enact a rather novel, perhaps even radical, way of inhabiting the world around him. One that forges a path toward restoring it from its state of decay.
Philosopher, Elizabeth Grosz, calls for a disposition towards living that takes into account “not just how the world is but how it could be, how it is open to change.” In many ways the narrative of Black Dog traces a possible way of embodying this directive. Moving away from the antagonistic, destructive, nihilistic, alienating, and exploitative status quo, Lang begins to play some part in the actualising of a different future. A future that is characterised by a fundamentally different state of relationality. One that is harmonious, joyous, familial, and enriching.
Listings | Thursday 27 Feb - Wednesday 05 March
Notable Screenings
Dahomey
Mati Diop, 2024
Any sessions at Cinema Nova
Hollywoodgate
Ibrahim Nash’at, 2023
Screening Sun 2 Mar at ACMI
Sugarcane
Julian Brave NoiseCat, Emily Kassie, 2024
Screening Wed 5 Mar at ACMI
Emelia Pérez
Jacques Audiard, 2024
Any sessions at Cinema Nova
New Films in Release
Dahomey
Mati Diop, 2024
Screening exclusively at Cinema Nova
Inside
Charles Williams, 2024
Screening at most arthouse cinemas
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024
Screening at both arthouse and multiplexes
I’m Still Here
Walter Salles, 2024
Screening at both arthouse and multiplexes
The Last Journey
Filip Hammar, Fredrik Wikingsson, 2024
Screening at arthouse theatres
The Porcelain War
Slava Leontyev, Brendan Bellomo, 2024
Screening exclusively at Cinema Nova
The Fall (Restoration Re-Release)
Tarsem Singh, 2008
Screening at select arthouse screens
ACMI
Focus on David Lynch
Mulholland Drive
David Lynch, 2001
Screening Thu 27 Feb
Eraserhead
David Lynch, 1977
Screening Fri 28 Feb
The Straight Story
David Lynch, 1999
Screening Sat 1 Mar
New Voices in Australian Cinema
Strange Creatures
Henry Boffin, 2024
Screening Thu 27 Feb
Matinees
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
Joan Micklin Silver, 196
Screening Fri, Sat, Sun
Documented 2025. Presented by AIDC
About a Hero
Piotr Winiewicz, 2024
Screening Sat 1 Mar
Future Telling: Short Films by The Guardian
Multiple Directors, 2024
Screening Sun 2 Mar
Hollywoodgate
Ibrahim Nash’at, 2023
Screening Sun 2 Mar
The Wolves Always Come at Night + Q&A
Gabrielle Brady, 2024
Screening Mon 3 Mar
Black Box Diaries
Shiori Ito, 2024
Screening Tue 4 Mar
Sugarcane
Julian Brave NoiseCat, Emily Kassie, 2024
Screening Wed 5 Mar
ASIAN CINEMA COLLECTIVE
Next screening on Wed 12 March
No screening this week
The Fall (Restoration Re-Release)
Tarsem Singh, 2008
Screening Daily
Midnight
Mitchell Leisen, 1939
Screening Sun and Mon
The Big Lebowski
Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998
+
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Joel and Ethan Coen, 2000
Double feature screening on Tues March 4 from 7pm
BBBC CINEMA (GALLERYGALLERY BRUNSWICK)
Closed until further notice
No screening this week
CHINATOWN CINEMA
Ne Zha 2
Yang Yu, 2025
Screening Daily
Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants
Tsui Hark, 2025
Screening on the weekend only
Creation of the Gods II: Demonic Confrontation
Wuershan, 2025
Screening Daily
Coming back in some variety soon
No screening this week
Events / Previews
Superboys of Malegaon
Reema Kagti, 2024
Spit
Jonathan Teplitzky, 2025
Werekend Previews
Hard Truths (Advance Screenings)
Mike Leigh, 2024
Previewing Fri- Sun
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Peter Weir, 1975
Screening throughout the week
Goodfellas
Martin Scorcese, 1990
Screening Wed 5 March
Mon Oncle
Jacques Tati, 1958
+
Playtime
Jacques Tati, 1967
Double feature from 7pm Tues
Release
Dahomey
Mati Diop, 2024
Screening Daily
Inside
Charles Williams, 2024
Screening Daily
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024
Screening Daily
I’m Still Here
Walter Salles, 2024
Screening Daily
The Last Journey
Filip Hammar, Fredrik Wikingsson, 2024
Screening Daily
The Porcelain War
Slava Leontyev, Brendan Bellomo, 2024
Screening Daily
Bird
Andrea Arnold, 2024
Screening Daily
The Last Showgirl
Gia Coppola, 2024
Screening Daily
Soundtrack to a Coup D ‘État
Johan Grimonprez, 2024
Screening Daily
Black Box Diaries
Shiori Ito, 2024
Screening Daily
Grand Tour
Miguel Gomes, 2024
Screening Daily
Queer
Luca Guadanigno, 2024
Screening Daily
Babygirl
Halina Reijn, 2024
Screening Daily
A Complete Unknown
James Mangold, 2024
Screening Daily
The Brutalist
Brady Corbet, 2024
Screening Daily
Maria
Pablo Larraín, 2025
Screening Daily
Presence
Steven Soderbergh, 2025
Screening Daily
Becoming Led Zeppelin
Bernard MacMahon, 2025
Screening Daily
Conclave
Edward Berger, 2024
Screening Daily
September 5
Tim Fehlbaum, 2025
Screening Daily
Nosferatu
David Eggers, 2024
Screening Daily
Anora
Sean Baker, 2024
Screening Daily
Sing Sing
Greg Kwedar, 2025
Screening Daily
Emilia Perez
Jacques Audiard, 2025
Screening Daily
Better Man
Michael Gracey, 2024
Screening Daily
Wicked
John M. Chu, 2024
Screening Thurs, Sun-Wed
The Substance
Coralie Fargeat, 2024
Screening Daily
DOGMILK DEGUSTATIONS: @ Miscellania
No screening this week
No screening this week
GAY24 (Bar Flippy’s)
No screening this week
HITLIST (9 Gertrude St, Fitzroy)
No screening this week
LIDO / CLASSIC / CAMEO
Events
Europa! Europa! Film Festival
Lido and Classic Cinemas
Program here
General Release
Inside
Charles Williams, 2024
Screening Daily
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024
Screening Daily
I’m Still Here
Walter Salles, 2024
Screening Daily
The Last Journey
Filip Hammar, Fredrik Wikingsson, 2024
Screening Daily
Bird
Andrea Arnold, 2024
Screening Daily
The Last Showgirl
Gia Coppola, 2024
Screening Daily
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
Michael Morris, 2025
Screening Daily
A Complete Unknown
James Mangold, 2024
Screening Daily
Queer
Luca Guadanigno, 2024
Screening Daily
Babygirl
Halina Reijn, 2024
Screening Daily
Grand Tour
Miguel Gomes, 2024
Screening Daily
Widow Clicquot
Paul Verhoeven, 2023
Screening Daily
Conclave
Edward Berger, 2024
Screening Daily
The Brutalist
Brady Corbet, 2024
Screening Daily
Nosferatu
David Eggers, 2024
Screening Daily
Anora
Sean Baker, 2024
Screening Daily
We Live in Time
John Crowley, 2024
Screening Daily
A Real Pain
Jesse Eisenberg, 2024
Screening Daily
Emilia Perez
Jacques Audiard, 2025
Screening Daily
OVA CLUB
No screening this week
David Lynch Retrospective
Eraserhead
David Lynch, 1977
Screening Wed 05
Program from 7pm | Screening from 8.30pm
THE MELBOURNE CINÉMATHÈQUE (ACMI)
Rome, Open City
Roberto Rossellini, 1945
Screening from 7pm
+
Un Pilota Ritorna
Roberto Rossellini, 1942
Screening from 9.00pm
MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY: SCREENING IDEAS
No screening this week
PALACE BALWYN / BRIGHTON / COMO / KINO / PENTRIDGE / MOONEE PONDS / WESTGARTH
Events / Previews
French Film Festival Opening Night
Monsier Aznavour
Grand Corps Malade, Mehdi Idir
Screening across Melb Palace sites from 4-6 March
General Release
Inside
Charles Williams, 2024
Screening Daily
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024
Screening Daily
I’m Still Here
Walter Salles, 2024
Screening Daily
The Last Journey
Filip Hammar, Fredrik Wikingsson, 2024
Screening Daily
Bird
Andrea Arnold, 2024
Screening Daily
The Last Showgirl
Gia Coppola, 2024
Screening Daily
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
Michael Morris, 2025
Screening Daily
A Complete Unknown
James Mangold, 2024
Screening Daily
Queer
Luca Guadanigno, 2024
Screening Daily
Babygirl
Halina Reijn, 2024
Screening Daily
Widow Clicquot
Paul Verhoeven, 2023
Screening Daily
Presence
Steven Soderbergh, 2025
Screening Daily
Conclave
Edward Berger, 2024
Screening Daily
Nosferatu
David Eggers, 2024
Screening Daily
Anora
Sean Baker, 2024
Screening Daily
Wicked
John M. Chu, 2024
Screening Daily
Static Vision x Rough Cut Present: Summer Sacrements
14:00 - NIGHT TIDE
16:00 - OSTENDE
18:30 - THE WOLF KNIFE
20:30 - LOST IN NEW YORK + SECRET FILM
Day Pass: $40, Concession Day Pass: $35, Individual Tickets: $15 ($12 concession)
Sat 1 March, Static Vision HQ, 47 Melville Rd, Brunswick West VIC 3055
The Last Showgirl
Gia Coppola, 2024
Screening Daily but Sat
The Fall (Restoration Re-Release)
Tarsem Singh, 2008
Screening Thurs, Fri, Wed
I’m Still here
Walter Salles, 2024
Screening Sat, Tues
Anora
Sean Baker, 2024
Screening on Mon
Bird
Andrea Arnold, 2024
Screening Sun
A Complete Unknown
James Mangold, 2024
Screening Sat
Becoming Led Zeppelin
Bernard MacMahon, 2025
Screening on Sat
Magic Beach
Robert Connolly, 2024
Screening Sat, Sun
Inside
Charles Williams
Screening on Sat
Conclave
Edward Berger, 2024
Screening on Tues and Wed
The Brutalist
Brady Corbet,
Screening on Wed
UNKNOWN PLEASURES @ Thornbury Picture House
No screening this week