The film deals with loneliness, a loneliness of the soul, very well explored in its characters, I would put the 4 main characters here, two brothers who own the farm, a widow who marries one of the brothers and her son.
The film takes place in the US state of Montana, in 1925, and the relationship of the title dog with the film is initially given because a character that does not appear in the film, the Bronco Henry, already dead and worshiped by the brothers, sees in the mountains that surround it. the property is a dog lying with its mouth open, and the power of the dog is a reference to the men who grew up there in that hard and inhospitable land, as is usual in western movies.
Going to the question that we address here, the Direction of Photography, is very well done, very well developed, all in pastel tones, ranging from blue to sand and brown tones, totally free of red! This is my interpretation, but red is directly linked to love and tenderness, which are totally absent in the film. The only part where something red appeared is in the center of a flower that the son makes to decorate the tables of his mother’s restaurant, but it doesn’t last long, because it is burned by another character, even in the scenes where the beef cattle having their skin removed there is the absence of red color.
The lighting in the film translates very well the aridity of the lack of affection and the solitude of the characters’ souls, but despite all this mastery of technique, I don’t understand that it is lighting and that perfect photography plays as deep a role as complex text. , full of unspoken emotions that carry the plot.
