Dir: Chris Sanders. Starring: Harrison Ford, Dan Stevens, Omar Sy, Karen Gillan, Bradley Whitford, Colin Woodell. PG cert, 100 mins.
The Call of the Wild asks us to look into the glossy, vacant eyes of a CGI dog and fall in love. Somehow, it works. Either Hollywood’s solved the great conundrum of the uncanny valley or audiences have just got used to the queasy feeling of watching something that looks real but isn’t. And there’s an obvious reason why the faux-pooch approach was used here. The film, the fifth cinematic adaptation of Jack London’s 1903 novel of the same name, is an old-fashioned adventure story that delights in the majesties and dangers of Canada’s Yukon territory. The book’s protagonist Buck, a St Bernard/Scotch Collie Mix, throws himself into an icy lake, leaps through fire, and comes face-to-face with a grizzly bear. No dog should have to go through what Leonardo DiCaprio did on The Revenant – especially if they can’t even get an Oscar out of it.
The Call of the Wild is set in the 1890s, when an estimated 100,000 prospectors flocked to the ice-packed valleys of Klondike after local miners struck gold. All these workers needed strong, sturdy dogs to carry their loads and pull their sleds. As a result, Buck is stolen from his master’s home in California and shipped to Skagway, Alaska, to be sold. He’s passed between owners. Perrault (Omar Sy) and Françoise (Cara Gee) add Buck to their team of sled dogs, used to deliver mail across the region. A haughty pair of city-slickers (Karen Gillan, swaddled in fur, and Dan Stevens, sporting a villainous moustache) work him to the bone. Eventually, he comes under the care of John Thornton (Harrison Ford). Grieving the death of his son, he’s come to the wilderness to find peace and isolation – despite the sad backstory, this is actually the first time in years Ford has genuinely looked happy to be in a film.
London’s book gave Buck complex emotions and man’s upright sense of morality. So it makes sense, too, that director Chris Sanders (a veteran of the animation industry) would look to a form of exaggerated reality. This Buck looks like a dog, but he doesn’t necessarily act like one. Sure, he’ll tear through his owner’s house like a miniature maelstrom, knocking over vases and gobbling up roast chickens. When he walks on snow for the first time, he’ll react with confused excitement. Those behaviours we recognise. But Buck’s also able to recognise that John has a serious drinking problem and react by constantly swatting glasses of whisky out of his hand. When people talk, it actually looks like he’s listening.
The film was written and shot by 20th Century Fox before it was acquired by Disney – it'll be the first to feature the new name, 20th Century Studios. Yet, oddly enough, the film's most reminiscent of the live-action adventure films that used to be Disney's bread-and-butter back in the 1950s and 1960s, like the Davy Crockett series or 1957's Old Yeller. There’s a romanticism in its approach to nature. When Buck battles his rival, the husky Spitz, for the position of alpha male, they're bathed in the soft glow of the northern lights. At a time where cynicism reigns, it's refreshing to call back to the simple thrills of venturing into the unknown – CGI pups at your side or not.
