Of Dogs and Men (2024) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: every time the girl calls for or mentions her dog
Take a Drink: for every new person (and story of that terrible day)
Take a Drink: “red alert”
Do a Shot: for videos
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
The conflict in Gaza justifiably has the world’s attention, and while most hope for the fighting to cease, it doesn’t look like that’s particularly likely anytime soon. Whataboutism never really plays when human lives hang in the balance, but we still cannot forget what precipitated it, or at least this particular conflagration- the horrifying attacks of October 7th.
Of Dogs and Men follows one young Israeli girl as she sneaks back into her kibbutz soon after those events, in search of her missing dog (and perhaps clues as to what happened to her missing mother).
A Toast
The first thing you must wonder as you begin to watch this film from Dani Rosenberg is whether you are watching a documentary or a drama. It turns out it is a little of both, as Rosenberg went into the Nir Oz kibbutz just weeks after the attacks. The devastation he witnessed, even after some efforts to clean up or even return is sobering. This is a film that is shockingly of the moment – that’s not movie gunfire in the distance
Rosenberg pointedly avoids making a film solely about the attacks themselves, or documenting the aftermath, and he does not duck from the atrocities being committed on both sides, either in conversation or in the never-blurred-enough videos our protagonist swipes mechanically as she struggles to fall asleep at night. In centering her (finely acted by Ori Avinoam), he centers her unbroken humanity and empathy, for the innocents on both sides suffering for the ideals of others.
Beer Two
The animated interludes with the dog running are well-rendered, and ultimately engendering of empathy on all sides of the death and the humanity here, but perhaps gilding the lily a bit.
Verdict
Of Dogs and Men is a haunting story about and set among the ghosts of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel.
