How wolves evolved into man’s and woman’s best friend has been the subject of much research and speculation—and serves as the powerful plot of the new film Alpha from Sony and Columbia Pictures.
Albert Hughes breaks free from his normal moviemaking partner, brother Allen (Menace II Society, Dead Presidents, From Hell) for a solo cinema venture for a story takes us back 20,000 years ago to a rugged and relentless landscape that would become Europe.
Society is comprised of small villages whose sole purpose is to survive each oppressive winter. Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is the chief’s son. He is about to go on his first hunt. It’s an endurance test on many levels—long distances traveled, wild animals who seek to turn the tables on the hunters and of course, the buffalo they seek to feed their clan for the blisteringly cold months that lie ahead.
In a stunningly orchestrated scene, the dozen or so men charge the herd and then manage to divert the rampaging beasts towards a cliff where they tumble to their collective death. In the process, Keda gets impaled by one of the buffalos. As he fights off the animal, he winds up going over the edge. His father Tau (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson) is devastated. The chief leaves a makeshift memorial and leads his clan home from an otherwise successful hunt.
Meanwhile, Keda miraculously survived and is determined to find himself home before the death sentence that is winter arrives. He’s got a broken foot. Needless to say, it will be slow going. During one of the early evenings of his tenacious trek home, out of nowhere a pack of wolves surround the young man. Keda scurries up a tree and waits out the predators. In the morning, he awakes to the coast being clear…except for one wolf whose pack left him behind due to an injury.
There’s something about Keda that we learned earlier in the film. Killing does not come easy to him, particularly if the animal is defenseless. He also cannot simply leave an ailing soul behind.
How Hughes (who not only directed, but came up with the story that would become a screenplay by Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt) takes us on a journey of two survivors who go from killers to confidants impeccably answers the question, “how did dogs become mankind’s best friend?”
It is never easy and far from immediate. The trust from wolf to human, and vice versa, is developed so painstakingly patiently by Hughes that Alpha comes off as immensely profound. This is also a survival story. It chronicles how not one, but two, fully developed and hobbled characters achieve the impossible. Each one could not have remotely considered doing so without the other. It is because of that journey that a bond is born and as such, we get a front row seat to how each species came to rely on the other for protection, shelter, food and above everything else, unconditional love and companionship.
Smit-McPhee is a revelation and does so in the most subtly quiet ways. There is not much dialogue in this film (the characters speak a prehistoric language to each other with subtitles) and as such, the actor is tasked with conveying everything without saying much of anything.
There is a titanic character arc to Keda that only has the fate of the entire film hanging on it being delivered richly and most importantly, realistically by the young actor. He is astounding as we witness a young man go from fearful to fearless in the scope of 90 minutes, of course alongside his furry friend. The most integral aspect of Smit-McPhee’s job description on this picture is how the actor handles the fateful moments of wolf and human joining forces for the first time in history. It is achieved in the most triumphant and sublime ways.
Hughes has crafted the most beautiful of epics, and that descriptor works on a multitude of levels. Visually, cinematographer Martin Gschlacht has captured a prehistoric world that is devoid of human masses and as such, everything that means. From a sky overcome with stars to vast landscapes that seem to know no bounds, Hughes and his DP deliver something truly profound. Alpha is also stunningly beautiful in its portrayal of how two species navigated a destiny-laced collision course. If this film doesn’t make you want to go home and pet your dog—or immediately get a dog—than nothing will.
Lastly, the final shot of Hughes’ effort is jaw-droppingly stunning. Not only does it bring the theme of the entire film home, it does so in a manner that embodies the old phrase, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
In this case, that last image defines 20,000 years of canine-human history.
Grade: B+