J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace, which Kornél Mundruczó was adapting into a theater play when it inspired him to loosely base a film on it, pops up in bits and pieces of White God's plot line. The estranged father-daughter duo, the fact that Daniel used to be a professor of some kind, the violent attacks of a long-oppressed minority, etc. But the more important feature of the novel, one that really looms writ large everywhere you look in this movie, is the idea that at some point we're all called to answer for the crimes of our group (our family, our nation, even our species).
In the most striking scenes Mundruczó explores the predicament that once an oppressed minority rises in rebellion, it often views the majority as a totality. Not everyone who got slaughtered in slave rebellions, for instance, was a cruel and despicable slave owner. Thus, when the dog rebellion really gets going, after having disposed of the individuals who wronged Hagen directly, the dogs are ready to tear apart Lili, even if she used to be his only human "friend".
The solution, while cinematically beautiful, does pose a problem of its own. Either that or Mundruczó is merely pointing the problem out in a cinematically beautiful way. As Lili and Daniel lie down with the dogs - in opposition to the proverb that those who do are bound to get up with fleas - there are two ways to view the scene. Either Mundruczó is being a bourgeois elitist and saying that, in order to placate the oppressed, the majority should somehow, possibly through charity and so on, stoop to their level. Or he is attempting to show that, in order to avoid social catastrophe, the majority should somehow accommodate the oppressed minority's perspective in its own - and "lowering" to that perspective is simply due to the fact that in Mundruczó's film the oppressed happen to be dogs.
Either way, White God is a wonderful piece of cinema only where it pertains to these questions. The plot that it uses to get at the main topic, as well as its execution, rarely exceeds the confines of a clunky family melodrama. And the Wagner references seemingly go nowhere.
In the most striking scenes Mundruczó explores the predicament that once an oppressed minority rises in rebellion, it often views the majority as a totality. Not everyone who got slaughtered in slave rebellions, for instance, was a cruel and despicable slave owner. Thus, when the dog rebellion really gets going, after having disposed of the individuals who wronged Hagen directly, the dogs are ready to tear apart Lili, even if she used to be his only human "friend".
The solution, while cinematically beautiful, does pose a problem of its own. Either that or Mundruczó is merely pointing the problem out in a cinematically beautiful way. As Lili and Daniel lie down with the dogs - in opposition to the proverb that those who do are bound to get up with fleas - there are two ways to view the scene. Either Mundruczó is being a bourgeois elitist and saying that, in order to placate the oppressed, the majority should somehow, possibly through charity and so on, stoop to their level. Or he is attempting to show that, in order to avoid social catastrophe, the majority should somehow accommodate the oppressed minority's perspective in its own - and "lowering" to that perspective is simply due to the fact that in Mundruczó's film the oppressed happen to be dogs.
Either way, White God is a wonderful piece of cinema only where it pertains to these questions. The plot that it uses to get at the main topic, as well as its execution, rarely exceeds the confines of a clunky family melodrama. And the Wagner references seemingly go nowhere.