God Man Dog, or to give it it’s proper title, Sad Taiwanese People Are Sad, can be charitably described as a melancholy meditation on the curative powers of religion in multi-faith Taiwan, and uncharitably described as more relentlessly miserable than a plague pit on Christmas Day.
Drawing water from the same well as Magnolia, Crash or Happiness, G.M.D. is an ensemble piece comprised of initially disparate characters and stories, all of whom inevitably collide and tangle together as the film draws to its conclusion. Each of these characters are fundamentally broken in some way, grappling with an unfathomable emptiness and the cast list covers all the big archetypes of the We That Are Sad canon of maudlin melodrama. We’ve got the Alcoholic, a deadbeat dad downing cloudy liquor surrounded by sports trophies of yesteryear (in an admittedly nice twist on the cliché, these turn out not to be his); the Catatonically-Depressed, a new mother whose two favourite things are staring into the middle distance and hating her baby; the Homeless One, a teen orphan who crashes eating contests just to get a decent meal; The One Just Filled With Rage, a teen boxer sent away from home by her parents.
The only character who appears to be at any sort of peace is that of Yellow Bull, an amputee (physically broken rather than spiritually) whose job is to drive a gaudy truck full of religious statues to fairs and public gatherings, and dispense fortune cookie poetry to paying customers. In his spare time, Yellow Bull takes care of things, and in doing so finds himself at the heart of the film’s eponymous trinity; he fixes up any God statues he finds, feeds stray Dogs and even provides succour to his fellow Man. A travelling healer disguised as a spirituality huckster, he’s the film’s most interesting character, and far too absent from the turgid first half of its running time.
It’s a slog. Everyone just keeps bursting into tears. Happiness proves that unrelenting pain can be palatable to an audience, but that film’s ace in the hole was a thick vein of ink-black humour that ran throughout, varying the tone to provide welcome relief from the suffering. No such luck with God Man Dog‘s opening acts, and coupled with this po-faced commitment to despair is an unfortunate lack of subtlety in the writing from Li-An You and also-director Singing Chen. Some of the blame might be claimed by an awkward translation, but much of the film’s first hour is scene after scene of heavy-handed dialogue like “You’re an alcoholic! You’re ruining Mum’s life!” and “Do you think I don’t care about the baby? Don’t shut me out again!” The cast acquit themselves well, but constantly battering the audience about the face with cloth-eared issue-driven conflict without any reprieve is simply exhausting or, worse, boring.
The religious symbolism starts off with similar bluntness. One of the first shots is of Yellow Bull’s truck, crammed with enormous sculpted idols, a scrawl on a lamppost declares “the kingdom of heaven is near”, and the drunk holds his hand up to block the sun from his eyes, allowing the tiny crucifix he has tied to his wrist to dangle in the sunlight like an angel. The film seems to be shouting “God. God! Gooooooood!” from every frame with all the subtly of an electrocuted baptist.
However, something happens halfway into the film. At almost exactly an hour in, the plot strands start to intertwine and, almost immediately, sparks of life begin to appear. Misery loves company it seems, for when the leads are crashed together (sometimes literally) their effect on each other brings the varying tones of tender light and heartbreaking dark the film so sorely needs. It even becomes bleakly humorous if you can fathom it.
Throwing together the characters also serves to illuminate what the film might be saying with it’s omnipresent religious overtones. Throughout the abject misery of the first hour, character are told to turn to God. Platitudes about God’s love and his healing powers are dealt out with as much heart and sincerity as Yellow Bull’s fortune poetry. In fact, throughout all of man’s hardships, the Gods are impassive. In one darkly comic moment the homeless teen is kicked off a bench so that ‘the gods’ (three men in huge prosthetic God costumes) can sit there and take a load off.
Instead, despite the constant presence of religious iconography, the characters only find the help they need in each other. Yellow Bull takes in the homeless teen and begins to put him back together piece by piece, like the religious artefacts he mends on a day to day basis. Perhaps what the film is trying to say is that instead of buddhist fortune poetry, or impassive idols, or christian hectoring, what we need to have faith in is each other. Perhaps the film regards the phrase “the kingdom of heaven is near” to be as empty and fatuous as it sounds. Conversely, there’s more than a little touch of fate about the way the characters stumble across each other. Perhaps there’s instead a deeper religious message in the film’s very structure; redemption through a somewhat contrived destiny that moves in mysterious ways.
Surprisingly, no conclusion is overtly stated by Singing Chen and by the time the credits roll, God Man Dog proves itself to be a thought-provoking and eventually charming piece. It’s a real drain on the human spirit actually getting to the closing moments – had the storytelling of the first half been subtler, G.M.D. Could have achieved greatness – but once you reach its end, the film is much more satisfying than initial appearances suggest. It will ultimately redeem itself. You just need to have faith.
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