Old Fangs is a short film directed by Adrien Meirgeau and Alan Holly and produced by Cartoon Saloon, the Irish animation company most famous for the feature films The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of The Sea (2015) and the children's TV series Skunk Fu! It tells a story of estranged family relations and the challenges of confronting a past from which one has long since distanced oneself, using the anthropomorphic scenario of a young wolf venturing into the forest in order to reunite with the brutish father he fled from many years ago.
The opening images of the film show a car traveling through a misty landscape; only after we see a nondescript finger fiddling with the radio controls is it revealed to us that the occupants are animals. For the early stages of the film, Old Fangs plays as an increasingly perturbing mystery, the purpose of the characters' journey being divulged only very gradually as they press ever further onward. We see this trio of animals - wolf, fox and Siamese cat individually - laughing together at a service station and might initially be inclined to assume that we are witnessing three friends embarking on a carefree road trip. Our only hint, at this point, of any potential trouble waiting further down the road is in the uneasy stillness of the wolf character as his two companions are casually savouring the cool breeze blowing through an open car window.
As the surrounding scenery changes from open fields to houses and telephone wires to finally a dense wooded area, whereupon the characters leave their car and trek cautiously into the forest, there is a genuine sense of journeying into the dark unknown, the anxieties of the fox and cat aligning with those of the viewer. Only when the wolf, upon reaching a pond concealed in the depths of the woodland, reflects that, "It hasn't changed at all...only it seems so much smaller," does it finally become apparent that he is returning to an old childhood haunt. The characters continue their journey and, with night now having descended upon the forest, at long last happen upon what they have been searching for this whole time - a solitary house located within the forest clearing. At this point, the fox and the cat retreat into the grasses and their lupine comrade is left to complete the last leg of his journey on his own. The final piece of the puzzle (or the particular puzzle which opens the story, at any rate) clicks into place when the young wolf warily opens the door of the house, and greets the occupant with a tentative "Dad?" There is now little remaining mystery as to the nature of the preceding journey; instead, it becomes a question of what past events have led to the estrangement between the old and young wolf and, more pressingly, what will happen next?
Right from his introduction, the older wolf has a foreboding presence that clearly distinguishes him from the trio of cautious travelers. All four animals are anthropomorphised, yet he is given an obviously more bestial look, with his gargantuan form and lack of clothing. In some respects, he resembles the archetypal "Big Bad Wolf" of fairy tale notoriety and yet in many shots he appears so monstrous and grotesque that he is scarcely recognisable as a wolf - our very first glimpse of the character shows a close-up of his snout exhaling cigarette smoke in a manner which gives him an almost draconic air. Naturally, he completely dwarfs his son, to the extent that it is challenging to consider them as being of the same flesh and blood. The older wolf embodies the wilder, more brutal lifestyle which his son has long-since deserted, a disconnect emphasised in the implication that the younger wolf has abandoned his carnivorous roots; upon the table are the remnants of a prey animal's entrails, which the older wolf picks up and angrily asks the younger wolf if it disgusts or frightens him. He then imposes a test upon the younger wolf, commanding him to assume his image by sharing in his smoking habit.
Although some viewers deem the ending of the scenario to be incomplete or anti-climatic, to my mind it is perfectly done, as the fox and the cat, once again mirroring the anxieties of the viewer, express concern that the situation will turn ugly, only for the door of the house to open once again and for their friend to wander silently out, apparently without incident; as he rejoins them, he imparts simply that his father, "wasn't really pleased to see me", and they begin their journey back out of the forest. It is an outcome that subverts viewer expectations, with the failed reunion between father and son ending not with heavy drama but with an understated disquietude, hinting at deeper and unspoken pains which simply cannot be brought to the surface. It is only after the younger wolf has left the house that we see any hint of vulnerability from his father; his eyes are widened, as if he too is left shocked and hurt by the outcome. It is in this wide-eyed expression that we finally see some resemblance between the father and son; it recalls the startled expression worn by the younger wolf as he first set eyes upon his father's house.
We also here get some inkling of the mother wolf's role in this equation, with a subtext about domestic abuse suggesting itself as smoke rises from the older wolf's cigarette and is seen to obscure her image in a family photograph. She is scowling, as if staring accusingly back at him, perhaps betraying her dissatisfaction with the relationship. As the younger wolf treks back through the forest and is haunted by a series of flashbacks recalling how, as a small cub, he would observe his father hunting, we see the mother wolf sitting silently upon the sidelines, her unhappiness muted and in the backdrop, but nevertheless evident. Ultimately, we learn that it was the mother who led the younger wolf in the abandonment of his father (by which stage the gentle regard shown by the younger wolf toward a ladybird, in contrast to the ruthlessness with which his father hunts down and slaughters a deer, had illustrated how far apart they were already growing). Overwhelmed by his memories, the younger wolf begins to run in the present too - for the second time in his life, he finds himself fleeing from the wilderness that he now knows for certain he can never be a part of.
One aspect of Old Fangs which stands out as particularly wonderful is its striking and extremely effective use of colour. Throughout the film, the various stages of the younger wolf's journey is illustrated through dramatic changes in colouration which perfectly encapsulate the mood of each sequence. As the trio of travelers head through the outskirts of the forest, the dominant colours are warm, glowing reds and browns, which gradually give way to darker hues as they get deeper into the forest and the last rays of evening sun begin to lesson. As they approach the clearing and find themselves outside the house of the older wolf, this changes to a cold and ominous dark blue. By stark contrast, the interior of the house is a glaring and unnaturally bright yellow, which further emphasises the imposing presence of the father wolf, and also the passionate, fiery tensions which lurk beneath the surface of their uneasy reunion. Obviously, these changes in colour mark the temporal stages of the young wolf's journey, with day transforming into night, until finally he ends up in the artificially-lit milieu of his father's home. But they also symbolise his emotional journey, and the increasingly harrowing turmoils of having to delve into his past and confront the source of those anxieties. In the young wolf's initial childhood flashbacks, the dominant colour is green, with its obvious symbols of youth, freshness and springtime. In later flashbacks, we see that autumn browns have crept into the picture and are becoming ever more prominent, indicating loss of innocence and the gradual decay of the young wolf's relationship with his father.
It's a tiny quirk of the film, but I do ponder the significance of the young wolf's companions being a fox and a cat, two fellow predatory animals, instead of two herbivorous species, as an obvious means of further signifying the young wolf's disconnect from his carnivorous origins. Perhaps, alternatively, they indicate a disconnect from the dense wilderness in which the older wolf is most at home, with the cat suggesting domestication and the fox adaptability to more urbanised environs. In that sense, they are signs of just how far the younger wolf has come in order to revisit his father, and how far away he initially fled to get away from him. Moreover, they are indicators that, no matter how troubled or haunted the younger wolf might be by his past, he has friends and will never be alone in the world. The same cannot be said for his father, who ends up condemned once again to his solitary lifestyle, having twice been deprived of the son whom he so desperately wanted to mold in his own image.
The final images of the film show the older wolf inside his house, huffing with anguish and shedding endless tears; a reminder of the pain that exists upon both sides of the broken relationship and a further hint of the terrible vulnerabilities lurking beneath his brutish exterior. We sense that there is a far bigger story here to be explored, but Old Fangs wisely keeps things as understated as possible, giving us only bits and pieces and allowing the atmosphere of each individual scene to divulge as much or as little as we need. It is a haunting conclusion to a beautiful and harrowing film, one which offers no easy answer to the issue of estrangement, taking us simply on a journey into a unsettling world where the traumas of past events continue to cast long and threatening shadows over the present, and the two wounded souls at the centre of the story are left to discover that they are beyond all reconciliation.
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