White God didn’t just win an Un Certain Regard award at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, it also won an award that Cannes had to make up for the occasion: The Palm Dog. The recipients were Luke and Body, the canine stars of Kornél Mundruczó’s new film. Together they play Hagen, a mixed breed dog abandoned by his master’s father, who suffers criminal abuses on the streets of Hungary before leading an insurrection of strays against their human oppressors.
I got Kornél Mundruczó on the phone to talk about his ambitious new film, which holds the world record for the most canine actors in a single movie. We discussed the origins of the story, the film’s brutal themes, the award-winning performances of his two stars and why Tom & Jerry became such an important part of the production.
White God is currently in limited release.
CraveOnline: My first question about White God is pretty straightforward. Is this based on a true story?
Kornél Mundruczó: [Laughs.] Is this based on a true story…?
Yeah, was there actually a massive escape from an animal shelter anywhere, or…?
No, no. It’s just fantasy. It’s really like a fairy tale. Actually I was in a dog pound, a shelter house, and I was just checking what’s going [on] there and I was totally touched and shocked. Then I go to my scriptwriter, Kata Wéber, and I ask her, let’s do a movie. A feature about one dog in the streets of Budapest and how he came to be part of a shelter house. She thought that it was not enough, so let’s make a huge revolution and bite back. I really liked the idea, so that’s why we go for that. So it’s not based on a true story.
One thing I found very interesting, looking at it from an American perspective, were the details of how dogs are treated in Hungary and non-purebreeds are… I guess marginalized? Does that make sense? Is that the way it works there?
Not really, there was a [party] who proposed to have this law in the parliament, but that was rejected. So we were very close to it but [it never happened]. And to abuse dogs, yeah, it’s all over the world, also partly in Hungary. But I did a huge research and it’s really happens everywhere. Through this research I found some documentaries also from USA, where we also found images of dogfights. So we are not the only country that’s abused animals. I mean, we all are totally against that. It is like a protest against that. This is not just a particularly Hungarian problem.
No, I didn’t mean the specifically the animal abuse. I just meant specifically having to register them in that very particular way.
Yeah, yeah.
Tell me about finding your two Hagens, because they are incredible actors.
Exactly. That was such a process because from the beginning, from the trainers, from lots of trainers we got a lot of “no.” They told [us] it was impossible to do this movie without CGI and a new kind of dog, because that’s difficult. “We need our dogs to be painted mixed breed,” and something like that. I thought, no, I really would like to go for the conception, which means no CGI and finding newcomers, new dogs for the hero dogs. Actually, for all of them. So the point is I found an amazing woman, called Teresa Ann Miller, and she was the only who thought that maybe it can happen. She did a huge casting, she did a lot of videos, and she ran through a lot of shelter houses. She’s American so we found the dogs in Arizona, and then she started to work with them. That was really a huge process. Before that really we had [not] decided even to shoot the movie because I really needed a real hero to focus on.
There are two Hagens. Was one of the dogs better at one type of acting, and the other at another type? How did you use them?
Actually they really do the character together. We cannot separate them through “the good one” and “the bad one,” or he does the close-ups and he does [wides], or like that at all. Of course they have differences, as a personality. Like one is more like a gigolo, a more calm type. That’s Body. And Luke is really a happy kangaroo sometimes, just jumping always. But they did all of the scenes together. You don’t recognize it but even the most happy or the most serious, sometimes from one cut to another I changed the dog. [They] are really talented and did the whole thing, just two of them.
I thought the interplay between the story of the dog and the story of the young girl to be very unexpected. Can you tell me about how her story came about, and how you thought it would relate to what Hagen was going through throughout the film?
Yeah. Actually we really needed a character who is innocent, as innocent as the dog, and with whom we can follow, who is human, and who is mirroring the story of the dog. We understand more through her story how [much] pressure by society [is] on her, on Lily, and how we lost our innocence somehow if we only [follow] the rules. That’s why it was really important for me that her character and her coming of age story to be in as well. The whole structure. Yeah, to be frank, she’s nearly as close to me as Hagen because I mean, her character is the clear tone of the movie. Her treatment, her eyes, is really our story in it. It’s not just exotic, like to be close to an animal and to watch emotions by the animals, which is of course the most amazing and the strongest part of the movie. But her role made the strength of that line for the dogs as well.
I think my favorite character in the movie is actually the small dog that Hagen befriends early on.
Yeah.
I get the sense, and correct me if I’m wrong, that the smaller dog isn’t really supporting the revelation. She seems to be a rebel. Am I on the right track there?
Exactly. Exactly. For me it was also very important, the relationship between Hagen and Marlene. Marlene is the Jack Russell. I mean, it was really like an idea: they also have relations, they also have friends, they have loves. All of human emotions because actually they are really close to humans and they really build it like that. I remember from my childhood my dog was really a friend of this dog, and an enemy of that dog. He loved this girl from the street. They’re really creating relations inside their population. I thought I really would like to show it. That was really important, to find the good character, and the Jack Russell was an amazing character for that. I was also surprise by her, by her act.
Tell me about the Tom & Jerry cartoon. Was that always the idea, to incorporate that particular piece of classical music, or did you find it eventually and go “Eureka!”
No, it was from the very beginning. I love that piece of cartoon. Of course it’s quite famous because it won the Academy Award for a cartoon, but also because the Hungarian Rhapsody is quite known in Hungary. I have a child’s memory of that piece and it’s really funny, so I really, really like it also how creative it is, how fun. At that moment we decided to choose the “Hungarian Rhapsody” by Franz Liszt, then I knew immediately I would like to use that [cartoon], and find a place inside the shelter house. And I also I like that connection: dogs watch the cat who is trying to hurt the mouse to this music. I found it quite complex.
We see Hagen watching that cartoon in the film and it made me realize that at some point someone’s going to be watching this movie at home, and their dog might be watching it with them, and the dog might get some ideas.
[Laughs.] Yeah, maybe. It was released in several countries and sometimes the audience comes with their dogs. I so happy about that. I don’t know the reactions by them, but I feel of course [that] they are not human but they really live in the family. So they are the closest animals to humans, for sure. We’ve lived with them for thousands and thousands of years. If a dog is part of the family, then they don’t even know they are dogs. They are the hairy part of the family. They don’t recognize themselves as, “Okay, we are animals and we are the dogs.” No, they are part of the family. So I think it’s really amazing.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
