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"It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to human beings" (Thoreau). Then again: "Pet owners are cowards without the courage to bite people themselves" (Strindberg). Through the blank-gaze lens of Errol Morris, the "good, solid enterprise" of pet cemeteries ("a need to be fulfilled") is half Twain, half Kubrick. The man behind the graveyard for critters faces the camera on his wheelchair and traces the "Kismet idea" to his squashed childhood collie. On the other side is his nemesis, the rendering merchant who proposes that recycling horses and circus animals has Old Testament roots. The trail of evictions, lawsuits and exhumations builds to the image of two verdant squares in the middle of the desert, the U.S. flag flapping over tiny tombstones and tiny coffins—the Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park, run by a wannabe impresario and his sons. People talk, clumsily and ardently. Some mourn the death of their pooches while recommending neutering, others declare canine loyalty as something utterly unattainable by humans. One elderly woman sits on her doorway and, over the course of a long, remarkable monologue, lays out something like a life: "Boy, if I could only walk... And my son, if he was only better to me... They went to court. It was somebody else's kid... Everybody loved that dog. I miss that little black kitten so much..." The framing (interviewees posed against floral wallpaper or in front of a cacti panorama) is fastidious, funny, and saved from kitsch by the quietly seething emotions on display. Morris records them stilly, his structure pivoting on rhyming-contrasting editing weaving together a miniature frieze about the ways we attempt to ward off loneliness and end up building shrines to it. "God is love. Backwards, it's dog."
--- Fernando F. Croce |