Zen Dog (2018)
Directed by Rick Darge
Written by Rick Darge
Starring Kyle Gallner, Celia Diane, Adam Herschman
Release Date June 22nd, 2018
Published June 23rd, 2018
Zen Dog stars Kyle Gallner from Shameless as Reed, a boring man stuck in a routine. He has a unique job attempting to create virtual reality tours of cities he’s never been to. Reed’s life is upended when his friend Dwayne (Adam Herschman) comes to stay. Dwayne interrupts all of Reed’s well crafted routine, messes up his apartment and generally throws Reed’s life into a general chaos.
One night Dwayne sees Reed having a nightmare, something that Reed admits is a regular occurrence. Dwayne claims to have a solution to Reed’s problem, lucid dreaming. Using a special kind of tea that he curiously refuses to reveal the origins of, Dwayne claims that Reed can control his dreams and get away from his recurring nightmare. Reed is dubious of Dwayne’s claims but tries the drink anyway.
In Reed’s dream, his name is Mud and he’s just quit a job where someone has just taken their life. The revelation sets Mud on a cross country odyssey from Los Angeles to New York City with a bizarre stop in Las Vegas and a fortuitous stop in Denver, Colorado. It is in Denver where Mud meets Maya (Celia Diane), a beautiful French woman with nowhere to go after breaking up with her boyfriend. Maya agrees to join Mud for a day which becomes a week and then a full romantic road trip.
Zen Dog can be confounding if you allow it to be but if you hang in there and get on the film’s unique vibe you will be rewarded. First time writer-director Rick Darge is a cinematographer turned director and his remarkable visual style carried me past my reservations about confusing story threads, including one about a character played by Clea Duvall that goes absolutely nowhere. The style of Zen Dog, the unique use of color saturation and the clever production design and costume pushed me past my reservations or confusion.
Zen Dog is a beautiful, meditative art piece featuring a lead performance by Kyle Gallner that is warm and inviting. Gallner’s unusual face is a great asset to his work here as he sleepiness, his heavy lidded eyes are a lovely way of delineating Reed from the much more lively, smiling and charismatic Mud, even as they are apparently the same person. Gallner’s face is so different yet the same from Reed to Mud that, much like the lively visual style of the film, it helps get you into both stories being told.
There is a legitimately Terence Malick quality to Zen Dog. It’s not nearly as polished or confident as a Malick film like Tree of Life or To the Wonder but the crisp visuals and the exploration of the psyche is similar. Like Malick, Darge likes to use changes in color as a visual shorthand for a memory or a dream. The desaturated look of Reed’s apartment and brightly colored Volkswagen that Mud drives are each lovely in their own way and help differentiate where we are in each story. It’s a lovely way to visually cue a story.
Celia Diane is wonderfully cast as a manic pixie dream girl. Diane’s face and manner have a lovely dream-like quality in the way she moves like a dancer, so effortlessly. Her French-ness is part of the fantasy, especially if you’re a movie fan. There is a 60’s quality to Mud’s journey, from his uniquely styled jacket, covered with 60’s art to his VW’s psychedelic paint job. If you’re a cinema snob of the 60’s then all you wanted in the world was a road trip with a beautiful French out of a Godard fantasy. That’s Celia Diane.
I am reading way more into Zen Dog than most maybe, probably because this kind of movie is right up my alley. In reality, Zen Dog is not a movie for all audiences. If you desperately need a linear story with a conventional plot, Zen Dog is not for you. If you are impatient, Zen Dog is not a movie for you. If you are not someone who gets swept up in beautiful visuals, Zen Dog is not for you. If however, you have a love for great cinematography, costumes and the romance of cinema, Zen Dog is exactly the kind of movie you’ve been looking for.
Zen Dog is available now to rent via most Video On-Demand or Streaming Services and is on Blu Ray in some stores.
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