Mike White is a Genius

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Not that I needed reconfirmation on this post's title, after Mike White had brought the world such small wonders as Chuck&Buck and The Good Girl, but Year of the Dog, his directorial debut starring Molly Shannon (in a fantastic performance as Peggy, a meek office worker who spirals into some sort of animus-dementia after the death of her beloved dog Pencil) is the best movie I've seen so far this year.

Basically a treatise on the weird places grief can drive us to, Year of the Dog is, in typical White fashion, a look through the viewfinder into the lives of the sorts of assorted oddballs and their atypical obsessions that don't usually get the filmic treatment; here we have a main character who's the woman in every office with doggie calendars and Cathy cartoons hanging on her cubicle walls. But, also in typical White fashion, he doesn't take the route that, say, Todd Solondz would take, and rip her to shreds; instead White makes us understand who she is, and see the world from her skewed point of view. That's not to say that he is accepting of her increasingly insane behavior as the film progresses; there's enough perspective to know pretty definiteively that Peggy's actions have become unhinged by her loss.

That's really the finest of lines that White treads, and he does so with spectacular ease - that we understand her behavior at the very same time that we can see it for the unhealthy reaction that it is. That the film ends [SPOILER] with Peggy justifying her new life and taking off happily into the sunset to continue her cause doesn't change the fact that we can view this as a negative change - that her grief has changed her probably for the worse, even as she's convinced herself this is what she wants/needs to do - is White's greatest strength as a writer. That is, the refusal to shoehorn definitive answers or labels or resolutions to the stories he's crafted. We can see this story playing itself out well beyond the credits.[/SPOILER]

Once again, White's work is filled with terrific little character studies - Peter Sarsgaard as the sexually-ambiguous animal-lover Newt, Regina King as Peggy's marriage-obsessed friend Layla, and giving a note-perfect portrayal of the Perfect(ly Neurotic) Suburban Mom is Laura Dern, whose every moment of screentime was GENIUS.

Year of the Dog is a fantastic film, as funny and sad and observant as any night at the movies can possibly be. Find it and see it.

And here's a nice little chat with Mike White at EW.
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