There couldn’t be a more auspicious time for a movie about well-intentioned, troubled souls on the precipice of authoritarianism.

Its characters are suffused with a paradoxical kind of fear that can only happen in a dream -- the dread before an immense catastrophe that’s unavoidable because it’s already happened.

Graf makes Going to the Dogs an unpredictable visual experience, bracingly experimental for a 68-year-old filmmaker who hasn’t run out of gas.

In typical Graf fashion, the film resonates as both a fully fleshed-out melodrama and a grand portrait of the times.