This review contains discussions of death and trauma.
I’ve written this review countless times in my head over the years since my first viewing of Toa Fraser’s Dean Spanley. I’ve ruminated on the scenes of a tipsy Dean Spanley regaling stories about his previous life as a dog, and each time I recall the wistful, ponderous gaze of Sam Neill, I get a little misty eyed.
It’s 1904 in England, and Fisk Jr. (Jeremy Northam) is growing tired of the routine and static visits he makes to his father, Horatio Fisk (Peter O’Toole). Fisk Sr. is your atypical grumpy old man. His twilight years are upon him, and as such, a stubborn routine has cemented itself into his existence. At his behest, his dutiful live-in maid Mrs Brimley (Judy Parfitt) tends to his daily life, making the same old stodgy stew day in, day out, while also ironing the daily newspaper.
Fisk Sr. would read the newspaper almost completely, avoiding the obituaries for fear of coming across his own name. While one day discussing the meaning of this with Mrs Brimley, Fisk Jr. notices an advertisement for a seminar on reincarnation, titled ‘The Transmigration of Souls’, run by Swami Nala Prash (Art Malik). Upon hearing about the seminar, Fisk Sr. remarks, ‘think if we had souls they wouldn’t get in touch? Of course they would! Think your mother wouldn’t be on to me about that garden? Of course she would!’ The close minded state of Fisk Sr. is given enough rope to hang itself without the film criticising the archaic mindsets of these older Brits for us.
Held in a cavernous estate where the parlour room has been transformed into a cricket pitch, the seminar entices the likes of Fisk Jr., his father, Dean Spanley, a rag-tag conveyancer named Wrather (Bryan Brown), and a couple of women who have arrived to ask questions about cats. The Swami responds to their remarks about cats having souls as unlikely, stating that a dog is more likely to carry on as ‘the dog amplifies, the cat diminishes man’s estimation of himself’.
With Fisk Sr. dozing off during the seminar, startling himself awake at its conclusion, just in time to hear the Swami mention the ‘ante-room of eternity’, a guiding reference to the current life we all live. This notion immediately evokes a response of ‘poppycock!’ from Fisk Sr., but it’s one that he struggles to evade for the rest of the film.
I first saw Dean Spanley on its initial release at Perth’s now defunct Cinema Paradiso in Northbridge. I was alone in the theatre, something which as the film came to a close I was supremely grateful for. I didn’t expect much going in except maybe a routine Brit-flick about stuffy old white men badgering on about the ‘colonies’ and the occasional moment of xenophobia, and while that certainly is an appendage to the plot of Dean Spanley, it’s not the core thrust of the narrative.
Sure, there is a subtle assessment of the role of colonial England and its taut ties to India, Africa and other countries it's noxiously exploited through wars or brute force dominance. There are quietly damning lines that open colonial England up for scrutiny, 'it's important for the English race that we are loved by those we rule’, but the interest in that kind of critique is not paramount for the film. The same can be said of the use of foreign culture and food to enlighten white minds, especially given Fisk Sr.’s statement of the ‘certainty of a closed mind’. While that is an avenue that does need to be explored and discussed in relation to Dean Spanley, the focus of the film, and of this review, is more towards the canine persuasion.
Fisk Sr.’s life is draped with loss and grief, with his wife having passed, and his son being lost during the Boer War. A lingering sadness over the disappearance of his childhood dog, Wags, weighs heavily on Fisk Sr.’s mind. For Fisk Sr., he did his part with staving off the death of his son, having remarked to him that the Boer War would be ‘bad for his health’, and as such, he treats the death of his son as if it only pertains to him and him alone. The death is not personal, for it did not happen to him. Fisk Jr. throws a barb at his father, stating that this insolence and obnoxious behaviour likely ferried his mother off to an early grave, with her having had to carry the weight of grief all by herself. Fisk Sr. strikes back with a simmering anguish and heartbreak that hides behind a stoic facade.
A demand to open oneself up to the pain of loss is to invite a reflection of that loss on those it is evoked upon. 'When something has gone to the effort of happening, it's best to accept the inevitable,' is Fisk Sr.’s dismissive report of grief and loss. Why bother spending your time ruminating on what is lost when it is already gone? Yet, to do so is to neglect the importance and value that the soul had on your life. To delegate their death as being the fault of their own is a powerfully reductive belief, one that is not simply contained by the fictional character of Fisk Sr.
Grief strikes us all differently. While Dean Spanley is a film that predominantly operates within the realm of light comedy, it does so with a powerful meditation on the resonance of grief across a lifetime. Fisk Sr.’s reluctance to reconcile with the deaths that span his life could easily be seen as the semblance of a generation of men who refuse to accept or acknowledge the emotional side of death, let alone the emotional aspects of themselves, but intergenerational failure to acknowledge or discuss aspects of death and dying has created pockets of society where death is only discussed once it is too late. In fact, the persistence of death being the final taboo is a reality that is being shaken out of its stupor by the persisting pandemic that is transforming our world at large.
Embracing the ‘eternal now’ at a men’s club post seminar, the father and son duo encounter Dean Spanley once again, himself enjoying a casual glass of the rare Hungarian sweet wine, Imperial Tokay. There is no subtlety here, with the allusion that Dean Spanley is a dog reincarnated as a man being laid out bare from the opening, and the imminent suggestion that Fisk Sr. was once his master. Fisk Sr. refers to Dean Spanley as ‘the dog collar’, remarking on his observed absurdity of a man of faith entertaining himself with the notion of reincarnation and the afterlife.
It’s here that the devilishly delightful performance of Sam Neill is allowed to thrive and flourish, with Fisk Jr. encountering the Dean for the third time in the same day, a matter which he recognises is more than a coincidence. A cat has ferried itself up a tree, refusing to come down, and Dean Spanley awaits with great fervour for it to come down. Fisk Jr. enquires about the Dean’s antics, at which he scoffs at their eager obstinance, stating that ‘a cat does not know how to play the game’, with them merely running away at a sight of a dog. Later, Spanley comments on the jovial nature of horses and sheep, both of whom understand the implicit role they play in the game of dog play.
Seeing the promise of a delightful figure to engage with, Fisk Jr. works about procuring bottles of Imperial Tokay from Wrather to entertain and talk with Dean Spanley. The treacly wine is an acquired taste, but for the Dean, his voracious sniffing of the wine is joined by his remark that ‘the aroma of Tokay is more unique and important than the taste itself’. The consumption of the wine becomes a small art, with the pourer needing to leave ample room for the aroma to linger for the drinker to absorb.
It’s with these talks with Dean Spanley that Fisk Jr. gradually comes to realise for himself that the Dean is a dog reincarnated as a man, a fact that should not come as a surprise to Fisk Jr. given the Swami called the Dean ‘Wag’: Walter Arthur Grahame Spanley. Again, this is not a subtle film, but nor should it be.
Across three dinners with the Dean, Fisk Jr. slowly introduces more guests, with Wrather appearing at the second dinner. Sam Neill and Bryan Brown are real life close friends, with the two having appeared in countless films together across their respective careers. It’s no surprise then that both Dean Spanley and Wrather were canine friends in a previous life, a note that is made all the more joyously obvious when the two meet. Their first encounter is like a grand dance, sourcing each other out, almost sniffing the air to gather each others stories.
While Dean Spanley may not be an actors showcase, it is a charming delight to watch four exemplary actors working together seamlessly. Peter O’Toole sits in the cranky old man role comfortably, allowing a glint of joy and charm to slip by his eyes every so often. He’s matched wonderfully by Jeremy Northam who responds to O’Toole’s caustic remarks as if he were his own son. Bryan Brown is an equal delight, slinging his Aussie accent around with great comfort and joy, and bouncing off Sam Neill, O’Toole, and Northam, as if they were having a round at the local pub.
But for Dean Spanley to thrive and survive in my mind for so long, it needed the delectable performance from Sam Neill to help it linger. Never before has someone delighted themselves and the audience so proudly with a performance as a dog. There is nothing obvious about his performance as Wags, with Neill instead relishing in the matter-of-fact mannerisms of day to day life of dog life.
Under the persuasion of alcohol, Spanley is transported to a life he once lived, remarking on the obvious nature of dogs and their relationship to humans. He openly answers questions from the probing Fisk Jr. and Wrather, with the two gradually learning aspects of a dogs life. How does one communicate? The importance of smelling each others scent left on a pole is akin to a deep conversation with a close friend, and to be yanked away by a master all too soon is to deny open discussion.
With films about animals, it’s easy to anthropomorphise their behaviours, to falsely attribute quirks and beliefs about how they interact with each other and humans, yet for Dean Spanley, there’s something profoundly moving about the depiction of a dogs mind here. It’s respectful, cautious, and acts as a guiding force. Neill’s performance helps immensely with this, but Alan Sharp’s script, adapted from Baron Dunsany’s novel My Talks with Dean Spanley, is equally forthright and delicate, making Dean Spanley a pure joy to listen to.
So often humans explain how a dog is feeling; after all, they cannot communicate with us directly. Yet, within Dean Spanley, this open dialogue between man and his dog becomes overwhelming with its importance and familiarity. As a dog owner myself, I have continually found myself in discussions with my dogs, talking about their day, my day, how we’re feeling, and what we want to do together. Sure, they cannot answer, but their reactions and implicit companionship helps build a bond that is stronger than any I’ve ever felt.
The deepest bonds I’ve had in my life have been with my dogs. I have been in love, I have had friends who have mattered more than others, I have been married and divorced, I have found love again, and I’ve found the joy of becoming an uncle to a beautiful niece and nephew. I adore and love those relationships completely, and value them beyond belief.
Yet, the yearning, enduring relationship of spending your life with a canine companion is one that no human companion can match. I don’t write that to dismiss the relationships I’ve had in my life, but rather to accentuate the difference between a bond between a human and a dog. There’s something genuinely unique and special about that kind of companionship, and it’s within Dean Spanley that that relationship, in its purest form, is depicted.
Fisk Sr. lost his dog Wags at a young age, and well into his senior years, he has never had another dog. The final half hour of Dean Spanley has Neill’s titular character retelling the fateful day that separated the two from each other. Fisk Sr. had gone off to school, a painful event for any dog as they have to watch their master disappear with no knowledge of where they have gone, and worse, when they will return. For dog owners, the daily ache of leaving our pups at home by themselves is one that we learn to live with.
With Fisk Sr. out of sight, Wags goes to the front of the house and talks with his stray dog friend - presumed to be Wrather -, and in an act of delight and frivolity, the two embark on a rapturous journey across the land. They chase and frolic with horses and sheep, bathing themselves in the scent of fear and joy that billows off these magnificent creatures in waves. They stalk and hunt a rabbit, devouring its terrified body.
As night falls, they bark and howl at the moon, doing their best to chase this foreign entity away from the premises they must protect. With the intention of returning home in their minds, they turn towards where they need to go, and are instead met with a disgruntled, rifle holding farmer.
As Neill intimately retells this story, accentuating the highs with applicable fervour, and the downs with difficult sadness, O’Toole’s eyes flitter with a lifetime of bonds and companionships that have filtered throughout his long life. In this moment, he is not Fisk Sr., but instead, Peter O’Toole, revisiting a life lived with all its glories. Knowing the fate that fell upon Wags and his friend, Fisk Sr. leans forward and asks about the death itself, to which Dean Spanley replies:
One moment you are running along, the next you are no more.
The weight of grief is sometimes so powerfully insurmountable that we cannot know what to do with it. For Fisk Sr., a son going off to war carries an air of expected loss, a preparation for death. For children, there is the expectation that they will outlive their parents, and the understanding that loss and grief is in their future. When that does not happen, the grief can transform someone to become an incomplete self, a shadow of who they were. The comparison between the loss of Fisk Sr.’s son and the loss of his dog is brutally stark. One he accepted the moment his son went off to war, the other he never grappled with.
Throughout my eight years as a Veterinary Nurse, I saw more than my fair share of dogs, cats, birds, and anything in between, be ushered out of this life into whatever awaits beyond. In countless situations, the masters of their companions would be crippled with tears and grief as their friend passed on. I lost count of how many times people would tell me that the loss of their dog or cat was harder than the loss of their parents, or their friends, or even their siblings.
I don’t say this to discount the loss of a loved one. I am fortunate to not have lost my parents yet, nor have I lost a sibling or a partner. I haven’t experience that grief, but I have sat with people going through similar losses to know that that kind of mourning is different than that of losing an animal companion. Our dogs and cats are with us for such a short time, their life cycles squashed into a decade or so, with our bodies ageing at a glacial pace compared to their nearly rapid descent. The knowledge that we will outlive our dogs and cats is a hard weight to bear, one that we silently sign up to when we accept them into our lives.
For many owners, this pain was simply too much to carry forth, and as such, they never had another dog or cat in their lives. For some, this dog was going to be their final animal companion, and that alone was a sadness was a difficult one for me to weather. We are communal creatures, and after all, we seek companionship and the comfort that brings.
I recall one day where an elderly couple came in with their older chihuahua that had been attacked by a neighbours dog. There was, devastatingly, no saving this poor soul. With much sadness and tears, we eased this little soul of its pain, and helped it along. The neighbour came in moments later, herself grappling with the difficult reality that she was about to lose her companion for an action that she never knew it capable of. This was to be her last dog, the pain he had inflicted caused too much anguish for her to be able to carry.
For the elderly couple, I was worried that they would never welcome another dog into their lives, but the following day they arrived in the clinic with a papillon puppy with them. Their hearts needed that dog sized hole filled immediately. For the neighbour, that hole will remain forever empty.
For Fisk Sr., that dog shaped hole was too big to fill, with the great unknown of having lost a dog creating a gorge sized divide in his heart. That kind of childhood pain changes someone, morphs across time, echoing into a wound that may never properly heal.
My grandfather was the same for a long period of time, having lost a dog in the early 2000’s, and then subsequently losing my grandmother as a partner. Life alone was difficult, the solitude leading to some difficult discussions about mental health problems and the impact of isolation. While at the clinic, I forced a dog in need of a home onto him (a move which I don’t recommend anyone in the same situation does), and that pup became tethered to him. When she was lost to a car accident, he immediately went out and sought a new companion, of whom also became intimately tethered to his side.
Death is draped across Dean Spanley, from the loss of a son, to the loss of a wife, to the unmending loss of a dog. It feels fortuitous in a year like 2020 that I would revisit this film, given the swathes of lives taken far too soon around the world due to a pandemic. Additionally so, the impact of public figures taken far too soon has caused further reflection of the weight of death in our lives. From Kobe Bryant, to Mike Noga, to Kelly Preston, to Chadwick Boseman, to Naya Rivera, and unfortunately, many more, the unshakeable weight of death has been a mountain far too high for some of us to conquer.
I write this with the knowledge that talking about death is a complex and difficult one. We each have our own beliefs, and for those who follow a faith, the relationship with death might be different than those without it. Yet, our relationship with a holy figure cannot compare to the relationship we have with our own family, and it’s there that these discussions of death need to occur. Do you know what your loved ones final wishes are? How they wish to be treated once they are gone? What to do with their belongings? It is a hard conversation to have, especially with someone in their youth, but death can come for us all in unexpected capacities.
I opened this review stating that I’ve written this review in my mind countless times over the years. I’ve long been apprehensive about rewatching Dean Spanley, as it’s a film that breaks my heart every time. I was fortunate enough to interview Bryan Brown last year, and as the conversation closed, I mentioned to him the importance of this film in my life. I let him know that every time I lose a dog, I watch Dean Spanley, for the comfort it brings, and the words that Sam Neill utters about his death:
One moment you are running along, the next you are no more.
He thanked me for the comment, stating that he didn’t know that the film would have that kind of impact, but he was grateful that it did.
Fisk Sr. comments throughout Dean Spanley that at any one time, there are seven great dogs on earth, and that Wags one one of them. For me, in July 2020, I had to say goodbye to my closest companion, my greatest bond, one of the seven great dogs, my wonderful mini schnauzer Henry.
Born on September 11th 2009, he was ten years old. A rapidly growing tumour took hold of his liver and spread through his lymph nodes, stealing him from me before I was ready. While I have two other dogs, Cheese and Max, to keep me company, the pain of losing Henry far sooner than I expected to, thrust me into a depression and grief that I’m only starting to move forward with.
When we lose someone, we don’t shake the loss, we simply learn to accept it into our lives, appreciating that this pain and sadness may hit us with a torrent of grief whenever it chooses. For me, I am learning to be comfortable with not having Henry in my life, even though my heart is yet to catch up. Watching a film like Dean Spanley helps me gradually progress that comfort and acceptance, although it’s painful nonetheless.
As masters, or owners, or as I prefer to say, animal companions, we want to know that when our loved one passes on, they do so with no pain and no suffering. As humans, we are afforded the chance to ease any suffering they may have, and part of that 'ease' is being given the means of deciding when they need to move on. That in itself is a difficult decision to make, and I know in Henry's final days I struggled to make the decision. Yet, he let me know when he was ready, just as many other animal companions will.
While I know a film like Dean Spanley isn't trying to talk about every loss of an animal companion, there is a comfort in experiencing that relationship that Fisk Sr. and Wags-surrogate Dean Spanley have when they are able to meet one more time. We all wish for one more day, one more moment than we're afforded, and while I'll never have that chance with Henry, I keep it in my mind that he is always there, ready for me to talk to when I need.
I mourn his passing, just as I’ll mourn the passing of those I’ll lose in the future, and just as my friends and family will mourn me when I’m gone. I hope that for those who have lost someone that your path to acceptance is a warm one, with the support and care of family and friends to guide you along it. If you have an animal companion, then their support and love is grander than they’ll ever know, and in these moments of darkness and despair, it is their presence that helps lift us up in unexpected ways.
2020 has been a horrid year for us all, with so much unfurling sadness blanketing an already tumultuous time. I know not the way to remove this unease and darkness, but I can reach out through my words and say that the more we hold onto the golden memories, the more those we lose will live in on our hearts and minds. Find that thing that helps ease your mind, and embrace it tightly, hold it and let it carry you through your tears. May we all get out of this time together.
Director: Toa Fraser
Cast: Sam Neill, Peter O'Toole, Bryan Brown, Jeremy Northam
Writer: Alan Sharp, (based on the novel My Talks with Dean Spanley by Baron Dunsany)
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