Year of the Dog - A Movie That Raises Animal Rights Issues

Year of the Dog, directed by Mike White and starring Molly Shannon, is one of those low-key, independent-type movies that many people miss. Just recently released on DVD, this film has gotten mixed reviews. What is unusual about it is that it dares to raise some serious issues on a topic that people often have strong feelings about. Molly Shannon, best known for her wacky characters on Saturday Night Live, plays Peggy, a single woman who relates better to her dog than to most people. After her beloved pet suddenly dies (she suspects he was poisoned by a neighbor), Peggy embarks upon an increasingly extreme and bizarre journey down the path of animal rights activism.
After adopting another dog, she becomes friends with a man who works at the shelter. He influences her to become a vegan -a vegetarian who eats no animal products at all. Peggy gradually becomes alienated from her friends and coworkers who find her new lifestyle a little strange. The film does a good job of showing how someone can, one step at a time, become a fanatic. She eventually takes home fifteen dogs to save them from extinction at the pound. She also attacks her neighbor with one of his own hunting knives (the neighbor she suspected of killing her dog), gets fired from her job after writing a check to an animal rights group in her bosses' name, and even antagonizes her brother after taking his young children to a slaughterhouse for an educational experience.
What I admired about Year of the Dog is that it shows a character who never apologizes for sticking to her values, even when those values cause her to become practically insane in the eyes of society. You cannot say that the film is a propaganda piece for the animal rights movement (though I'm sure some people will say this). Peggy is portrayed as an extremely unstable person, and the film -did I mention that it's at least half a comedy?--often has us laughing at her expense, as when she takes home a carload full of barking dogs.
The film does something not that common in American films -it shows something controversial in a rather objective manner, without taking sides. As I mentioned, Peggy never apologizes or "recants" her extreme position, but that doesn't mean we are meant to agree with her. I think, if anything, we are meant to grudgingly respect her for being herself no matter what the cost. The people who are on the "other side" of the issue are not portrayed as monsters. Peggy's boss is something of a nerdy type (but then so is Peggy herself), but he presents a rather coherent defense of experimenting on animals -the idea that it saves human lives. When he and Peggy debate this, no one wins the argument; both sides are put out there for us to decide. And, in the end, the film is at least as much about the psychology of Peggy doing whatever she has to do to find fulfillment than it is about the animal rights issue per se.
Yet, I cannot help but notice that Year of the Dog, despite being a rather silly comedy in many ways, actually brings up many animal rights issues in a more mature and balanced way than we are usually exposed to from anywhere. Peggy's friend who introduces her to veganism is not parodied as a freak, though he is certainly not a conventional character. Another issue that is raised without being resolved is that of animal shelters euthanizing animals. As someone says in the film, there are just too many for them to deal with.
In one scene, Peggy takes her brother's children to a farm that rescues animals that would have otherwise been slaughtered (there are actually quite a few such places today). This is, again, shown to be a perfectly nice place, not parodied as it might have been. Yet, on the other hand, when Peggy tells her brother and sister-in-law that she has adopted rescued animals in their name, and they laugh at her, it's hard not to laugh with them.
Peggy is, after all, no matter how well-intentioned, a single-minded fanatic.
I would recommend this film to anyone interested in issues such as vegetarianism, animal shelters and animal experimentation. No matter what your viewpoint, it might make you a little more open to all sides of these issues.