If you’re the sort of person who’s able to manage a nearly constant stream of dissonant feelings, you’re likely to get a lot out of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, which is largely excellent, and never easy.
The movie is based on a memoir by author Alexandra Fuller, and it tells of her white farming family in the short-lived territory of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in 1980, right on the cusp of Robert Mugabe’s election to power. And it would be perfectly reasonable for you to ask why we need another movie about white people in the middle of what otherwise would very much be a non-white story.
But the success of the film lies in its refusal to move away from the perspective of seven-year-old Bobo, who is the stand-in for Alexandra Fuller. And this continually reminds us that this is also a story about things that happened, and it can be told, too. We often hear from Bobo in voiceover, and since we are hearing from this child, whose worldview has been shaped by the British colonists around her, that voiceover can occasionally include the shockingly casual and foul racism she would have grown up with, and we have to keep reminding ourselves of everything that went into her seeing things this way and just assuming they’re natural. She repeatedly talks to us about the danger of “terrorists” that could be lying in wait anywhere, and we realize she’s a victim of propaganda, but also that she has very much grown up in a war zone that is genuinely dangerous.
The movie is directed by the actor Embeth Davidtz, who also plays Bobo’s mother, and she smartly directs the film with almost no sentimentality about any of what’s happening, other than an ending that feels a bit out of place. And this approach does go some way to helping us balance all of these difficult and contradictory feelings. It’s not a small task for us as viewers, but it leads to a powerful, and sometimes profound, experience.
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is in theaters.
