Debra Granik has become known for her interest in making films about a parallel America, one where people aren’t falling in love after meet-cutes in coffee shops, or running amok as their cities are destroyed by intergalactic monsters and tidal waves. Her films are about the America that exists in a place seemingly inconceivable in commercial cinema; the third world within the United States. In the chilling Down to the Bone, she chronicled the downfall of a working class drug addict played with precision by Vera Farmiga, and in 2010 she gave us the gift of Jennifer Lawrence in the powerful Winter’s Bone, which captured the desolation of life in the Ozarks, and how a matriarchy was taking over the useless patriarchal system that came before it.
In Stray Dog, she looks into the past for inspiration and makes us wonder what became of the free-spirited Easy Rider generation. The documentary film focuses on Ron ‘Stray Dog’ Hall, a Vietnam vet and avid biker whom Granik met during the making of Winter’s Bone (where he played Thump Milton). Hall’s imposing physique make him both intimidating and irresistible, clad in leather, sporting a full beard and obsessed with his bike, he is a cabinet of apparent contradictions. For all the roughness of his exterior, he is devoted to his wife Alicia, and their small dogs, whom he treats as precious children. This combination of tenderness and army-strictness make him endlessly fascinating to watch.
Through Alicia we learn that Ron still wakes up at night, screaming with terror after dreaming of his experiences in Vietnam, and we can see the joy leave his eyes as he remembers losing his friends during the war. While Granik doesn’t necessarily politicize her themes, the documentary can’t help but overflow with relevant political topics such as the neverending cycle between war and mental health issues (one can’t help but think of how thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer like Hall in old age), not to mention her insightful views on immigration (a large part of the film is devoted to Alicia moving her sons to the United States in hopes of giving them a better future).
Granik is an unshowy storyteller who attempts to help her audiences connect to people, fictitious or not, whom they otherwise would never even think about. She has a unique talent for avoiding exploitation, sentimentality or didacticism, her films being unique slices of lives that seem alien but are occurring right this second. In terms of sociopolitical relevance, no other American filmmaker is making work as exciting as hers.
