Heart of a Dog

Written, directed, narrated, scored and hand illustrated by Laurie Anderson, this essay film was her first feature since 1986. At its emotional center is her dog Lolabelle, a rat terrier who went blind years before dying in 2011. After Lolabelle lost her sight, Anderson arranged keyboard lessons as a kind of therapy, and the dog played with real competence in a free jazz register, gave concerts and recorded a Christmas record. From there the film moves to her mother's death, an accident in her youth, the bardo of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in which souls wait forty nine days between death and rebirth, and the atmosphere of surveillance that came with living in Manhattan after the September attacks. Her husband Lou Reed is never once named across the film, present only through the pronoun we, a brief home video, and his song over the closing credits, with the film dedicated to him. It screened in main competition at Venice, holds ninety six percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and the New York Times called it a philosophically astute, emotionally charged meditation on death, love, art and dogs. Who it's for: Lovers of the essay film, of Anderson's narrative voice, and of thinking about grief obliquely. Who it's not for: Not for viewers wanting a straightforward documentary, since the film moves associatively and is deliberately loose in structure.