Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Heart of a Dog Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 27, 2019

You may have heard of Keyboard Cat, a YouTube “phenomenon” whose original “performance” has racked up literally tens of millions of views on that site. However, Keyboard Cat is evidently not the only “piano playing animal” in the universe (taking into consideration, of course, that Keyboard Cat may not in fact really be playing), at least as evidenced by parts of Heart of a Dog, Laurie Anderson’s alternately gonzo and profound exploration of issues surrounding death and perhaps less drastic transitions, all within the frame of a remembrance of her beloved rat terrier, Lolabelle. Anyone familiar with Laurie Anderson may already be aware of how this multimedia performance artist has always tended to push the envelope in various ways. What has made Anderson such an enduring presence, though, is not just her often bracingly acute way of looking at things, but the fact that she doesn’t seem to be taking herself all that seriously, at least in the sometimes smug, self important way that “artists” (or perhaps more accurately “artistes”) can. That at least relatively unpretentious and maybe even self effacing quality really helps elevate Heart of a Dog, a film that should appeal instantly to "dog lovers" (like yours truly), but should also speak to anyone who has experienced love and loss.

One of the regularly sad announcements that can tend to dot social media feeds these days can be people letting friends now that some pet has, as they say, “crossed the rainbow bridge”. The palpable depression pet owners can experience when they “lose” their beloved furry friends is often obvious, and in fact can even lead to some snarky “grow up” comments on these same social media platforms, at least at times. Anderson seems to realize that waxing philosophical about an admittedly goofy looking little dog is probably not going to strike everyone as a “hip” thing to do, but that may be part of Heart of a Dog’s kind of wacky charm. And Anderson smartly utilizes her experiences with her beloved Lolabelle to branch out and explore a huge gamut of other material.

As with many Anderson multimedia presentations, Heart of a Dog requires to viewer to “go with the flow”, the “flow” in this case being a stream of consciousness that Anderson wades through courtesy of her narration. The film is a weird grabbag of sometimes almost dissociative imagery, with sweet little Lolabelle showing up now and again in both home movies and stills. Because Anderson typically has more on her mind that whatever the putative “subject” may be, Heart of a Dog delves into a surprisingly broad and deep array of material, getting into things like The TIbetan Book of the Dead and the horrors of living in New York City in the devastating days after September 11.

Heart of a Dog Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Heart of a Dog is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of the Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (mostly) in 1.78:1. The insert booklet contains the following information on the transfer:

Heart of a Dog is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1. On standard 4:3 televisions, the image will appear letterboxed. On widescreen televisions, the image should fill the screen. The majority of the footage in this film was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II; additional footage was shot using an iPhone, a GoPro HERO3 Silver Edition, and a Parrot AR Drone 2.0. The opening animation sequence was hand drawn by director Laurie Anderson, shot frame by frame on the Canon 5D, and animated in After Effects. Final color correction was done using DaVinci Resolve 11. The production was completed in a fully digital workflow.

The film features a fully digital soundtrack. The 5.1 surround audio for this release was mastered from the original digital audio master files using Pro Tools HD.

With an understanding that this is a typically dense and intentionally heterogeneous looking offering from Anderson, Criterion has provided another excellent transfer. The film has a huge variety of visual styles, including some brief animated sequences, and a ton of tweaked, distressed looking imagery. That, coupled with what looks almost like 8mm or 16mm home movies, can keep fine detail at bay at times, though there are really sharp and precise looking moments as well, as in the crosshatched animation that starts the film (see screenshot 3). Close-ups of various animals can also provide abundant fine detail in terms of things like fur and even little blemishes on their noses, but some of the footage seems to have had its aspect ratio either squeezed or broadened, another stylistic tweak that Anderson seems to like to indulge in. There is both color and black and white imagery here, as can be seen in some of the screenshots accompanying the review. The black and white imagery is often quite lustrous looking, with gorgeously deep blacks and a good accounting of gray scale. Some of the color imagery can look a bit blanched, something else I'm assuming was by design. Though the presentation here is progressive, it's obvious that some of the footage was culled from an interlaced source and can have "baked in" combing artifacts, and some other footage looks upscaled, with some noticeable "stair stepping" (see screenshots 18 and 19 for a couple of examples of these issues).

Heart of a Dog Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Heart of a Dog features two soundtracks, one in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 which offers the original HBO version with music and narration, and another track, perhaps unfortunately presented only in lossy Dolby Digital 5.1, that removes the music but keeps other elements intact. That "perhaps unfortunately" hedges a bit because the track is rather unusual, whether it has music or not, in that aside from Anderson's near ubiquitous voice and some ambient environmental effects (which are relatively plentiful), there's not a ton "to" the sound mix, and so a lossy offering may well suffice even for some audiophiles. The lossless track with music is quite interesting, with regular engagement of the surround channels, though Anderson's voice tends to remain front and center throughout. There are some minor variances in audio quality when archival video with its attendant audio is utilized, but fidelity is fine throughout and there are no signs of any overt damage or distortion.

Heart of a Dog Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Retelling (1080p; 41:10) is an interesting 2016 conversation between Laurie Anderson and co-producer Jake Perlin, which offers quite a bit of broader biographical and work data about Anderson.


• Deleted Scenes

  "What the Mind Sees - Secret Pictures of the Tibetan Sky" (1080i; 1:47)

  
  

  "On the Way to Jerusalem" (1080i; 1:06)

• Concert for Dogs (1080i; 6:36) is culled from a wonderful concert by Anderson done in 2010 which sought to honor 9/11 first responders and their canine aides. Fascinatingly, parts of this concert are at frequency levels that can only be heard by dogs.


• Lolabelle's Christmas Card (1080i; 4:46) is a whimsical video featuring a bit of piano playing.


• Trailer (1080p; 1:51)

Additionally, the release comes with a kind of semi-accordion fold out program and another little pamphlet with pictures and some kind of cool semi- transparent parchment see through pages.

Heart of a Dog Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Some Anderson fans may be aware of a 1993 documentary called The Sensual Nature of Sound, a piece which explored the lives and work of four (then) New York based female composers, including Anderson and Meredith Monk. Anderson and Monk have always (maybe strangely) been linked in my personal mind, for reasons I can't really explain, other than that I caught videos of each of them for the first time probably in the late 1980s or early 1990s within quick succession of each other. Like Monk, Anderson loves to stretch our preconceived notions of what a "movie", "video" or even a "concert performance" might mean, and Heart of a Dog is a kind of sweet but at times melancholic rumination on life and death (and dogs) that may not in fact be a traditional "film" or "documentary", but which has a rather bracing and even supercharged intellectualism at its core that helps to anchor sometimes freewheeling imagery. This won't be a release for everyone, but for Anderson fans, Criterion has provided a worthy release with excellent technical merits and some interesting supplements. Recommended.