Casual Critic Mini Reviews

Dogville (Denmark / Sweden / France / Norway / Netherlands / Finland / Germany / USA / UK) (Lions Gate) (2003) *****Year: 2003iMDB

Director: Lars von Trier Cast: Nicole Kidman, Harriet Anderson, Lauren Bacall, Paul Bettany, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Gazzara, Stellan Skarsgård

A brutal introspection into the human spirit, a tribute to theatre and the power of a message well conveyed without unnecessary props and special effects (although the movie is not a Dogme 95 movie), a possible allegory about the evolution of Hollywood, brilliant, masterpiece, powerful and audacious, are just a few of the often quoted opinions on Lars von Trier's latest movie. On the other hand, the movie has been accused of being anti-American, ignorant and pretentious. Dogville is a love-hate movie and I for one loved it.

von Trier takes his time in telling a story that can be summarized in a couple of lines but focuses on the feelings and true spirit of the characters involved, from quirky to shallow, to good people, every single person in town has a dark side to them, a nugget of evil that eventually surfaces in one shape or another. This take is extremely decisive: noone is really good. Our so called "humanity" is nothing more than empty words even for the apparently virtuous, as they ultimately give in to the society status quo.

The most controversial part of the movie comes however at the very end when we are presented with a photo-montage containing mostly famous photographs of the 1930's depression era (by Dorothea Lange and others) accompanied by David Bowie's Young Americans song. This montage seems to pinpoint US directly as the target of the movie's conclusions and it is the main source of anger among the movie's critics. I rather interpret it as an obnoxiously spelled out warning saying that even or perhaps especially Americans should look inside their own yards before attempting to clean up others.

But whether the final montage of the movie antagonizes you or not (and I do believe, until I hear a better explanation about its purpose, that the movie would have been better off without it), Dogville remains a powerful movie, one of the most original and masterful productions of recent years.