Red Dog

A film set in Western Australia. The place is the Pilbara. Iron mines, dust, heat and a town. A stranger comes into a bar. A dog is lying there and it is ill. The men start telling stories about the dog. From there the film is a chain of telling. Each of them takes a turn. The dog arrived in town one day. Nobody's and everybody's. He gets on lorries. He gets on buses. He goes from one town to another and knows everyone. Then one man arrives. John is an American bus driver. The dog chooses him. That is the turning point. For the first time the dog accepts an owner. John meets a woman. Nancy works at the mine. Then there is an accident. The dog starts looking for John. From there the film is a story of waiting. He travels the district, rides on lorries, searches for years. What the narrative is interested in is not a dog but a town: its idea is that miners who came from all over the world attached themselves to nothing, and that this animal was their only thing in common. The narrative runs in a comic tone. The scenes are short, the humour coarse, the characters types. The last section changes tone and the narrative prepares it. The dog really existed. He was a kelpie who travelled the Pilbara in the seventies and a statue was raised to him in Dampier. The source is Louis de Bernières's book; he saw the statue and looked into the story. The film did far better in Australia than expected. It was shot on location. Josh Lucas, Rachael Taylor, Rohan Nichol and a dog named Koko are in the cast. Kriv Stenders directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes family films and the Australian outback. Who it is not for: anyone looking for subtlety; the narrative is too open at its emotional points and the humour sometimes goes cheap.