Cinema: Heart of a Dog

Laurie Anderson strikes an emotional chord or two in this meditation on her relationship with her pet.

Laurie Anderson’s refractive musing on matters of life and death revisits the Tibetan Book of the Dead via her relationship with her beloved dog Lolabelle and the lost mother whom she worries she did not love. 

Animation and Super 8 footage lend personal texture to the documentary’s dreamy, healing fragments, with Anderson’s soothing narration providing poetic perspective on childhood trauma, the nature of storytelling, the transience of life and the release of love. 

Watching a small dog picking out accidental tunes on an electronic keyboard is a squealy delight, but it’s the haunting recognition that (as David Foster Wallace wrote) “every love story is a ghost story” that strikes the most affecting chord. 

Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and 9/11 are all thrown into the mix with a lightness of touch at once ephemeral and profound.

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