Dog's Mercury

Shot around a couple of locations on the Lancaster coast, Martin Radich's film is a grim film that captures a handful of characters who are found in a small Northern coastal town. It opens with a beautiful little girl ? smart and open like a less precocious version of Datoka Fanning. We then meet an older man who is very much of the opinion that humans are sh1t and that the world will be much better off without them. We also get a very poor busker, the girl's obese mother, a shaven-headed violent thug and a man trying to lose weight for his thin wife.I cannot claim to understand the film or totally get the point it is making but I still found it nearly hypnotic in its depiction of a society without cohesion or culture. In Roger the laundry man we see the impact of thugs and yobs in how they have brought him to the point where he sees no future in his community and has been pushed to the point where he himself is pushed to the point of violent thoughts. They are temporary but we wonder how they will continue to be that way. Meanwhile the man and his wife are just "strange" and the violent man is perhaps in need of help rather than someone to hit him back. In the middle of this is the young girl and again we wonder how she will develop within this mess.I'm sure I have sorely failed to get the point of the film and ultimately the vision is of the maker. Some reviewers on this site have maybe seized on that too much and indeed one has simply posted an interview with the director from another website as his "review" ? shame that his own opinion of the film was so lacking. Anyway, I may not have totally understood the significance of every part of the film but regardless this is a hypnotic and bleak view of a crumbled society through a couple of characters; it may not be all bad but it is certainly an uneasy and thoughtful piece that gives you thinks to think over rather than easy points or answers.