Movie Thoughts: The Dog of Flanders (1997)

• Released: 15 March 1997
  
• Directed by: Yoshio Kuroda 
  
• Running time: 1 h 33 min
• Rating 4.5/5

Synopsis

A poor boy named Nello in 19th century Belgium dreams of becoming an artist. He must find a way to earn a living after his grandfather falls ill.

My Thoughts

Before I go into spoilers in the following paragraphs, let me just say: watch this movie now. Yes, I recommend it. Immensely. It's best to go in blind. If you do know what happens, watch it anyways, it's still a fantastic film. But there's major spoilers to discuss. This has been your warning to go see it first. If you do watch it, though, be warned that things get pretty damn dark and depressing.

Okay so I totally went into this expecting a cute kid's anime about a boy, his dog and his best friend and their relationships. I just thought it'd be about him trying to find a way to keep being friends with her despite her rich father forbidding it. And that's what we got. But also so much more.

God, this movie is fantastic. The animation, the backgrounds, the characters, all fantastic. But it's also really dark and depressing. Nello has no parents or any family outside of his grandpa and his dog. His dream is to become an artist but he's too poor to even afford the proper materials. Grandpa gets sick. Nello must now do everything on his own. He can't see his best friend anymore due to her father forbidding their friendship because he is poor. He enters an art contest in order to try and get more money to survive, but loses. A fire breaks out at the local mill and he gets blamed for it, causing no one in town to want to do business with him anymore. At one point he almost loses his dog Patrasche, who was brutally abused for most his life before ending up with Nello. Grandpa dies, leaving Nello with only the dog as his only support left. He can't afford rent or food for himself nor Patrasche. Nello gets kicked out of his house on Christmas night, leaving him homeless in the cold. He and Patrasche are slowly starving to death because they can't afford food. The boy sees his best friend one last time and does one last good deed: he feels he has to leave behind his only family (the dog) with his best friend because she can at least afford to feed him. The dog refuses to take any of her food and instead (despite being pretty much dead already) follows Nello into the snowstorm. Both enter into a cathedral where Nello gets to see two very special paintings by his favorite artist for the first time, before both lie down and pass on from starvation and cold. Holy fucking shit. This is one of the most depressing things I've ever had to witness.

But it's so fucking good. The entire execution is just perfect. Maybe it's because I didn't know anything about the story going in that it left such a huge impact on me. Also, I totally get if people can't watch this. It is really depressing and dark and honestly if this isn't something you're in the mood for that's totally valid. 

But for me it's honestly what I needed when watching it. Just watching movie after movie that didn't leave that much of an impact on me recently made this a really nice break, one where I was totally invested in the characters and their conflict. And it's not just because this is a sad story that I was so invested, but genuinely because this is a good movie. The characters are great. The animation is fantastic. Despite being a very small-scale story you just want Nello to succeed so damn much. I really was rooting for him to just start becoming a street artist selling his works in Antwerp. But we get no happy ending for him. It's just beautiful yet tragic.

There is a slightly upbeat ending note. The entire movie is basically Alois (Nello's best friend) narrating her friend's life story to a bunch of children, and in the epilogue we do see that she grew up to be happy as a nun, and Nello's poor childhood friends are relatively well-off as well. And Nello, despite dying, does die on a happy note as he finally gets to see those paintings he dreamed of seeing for ages now, together with his last family Patrasche. Just such a bittersweet yet beautiful note to end things on.

Overall I can't recommend this movie enough. I can't recall the last time a film left such an emotional impact on me. Just, wow. Holy shit.