Dogville

  

Directed and Written by Lars von Trier

 

Starring:  Nicole Kidman, Harriet Andersson, Lauren Bacall, Paul Bettany and Blair Brown

 

MPAA: Rated R for violence and sexual content.

177 minutes runtime

Released March, 2004

 

At nearly three hours in length, nobody will accuse Lars von Trier of having nothing to say about man’s inhumanity to man.  Set in an isolated town in Colorado, Dogville could be anyplace in America or the world.  Why Colorado was the lucky state that got the nod is anybody’s guess.

 

Nicole Kidman plays the beautiful city girl Grace, appearing on Dogville’s doorstep and asking if she can be kept after distant gun-shots in the night.  Dogville is normally a very quiet place, explains the narrator (John Hurt), the only sounds being the birds chirping and the thud of the pile drifter in the marshlands, building what was thought to be a new prison.

 

Considering the town’s people didn’t know exactly what was happening three miles away, it is no wonder that they didn’t know what to make of their new guest.  But Tom Edison (ably played by Paul Bettany), knows something, because he met the gangsters who arrived immediately after his first meeting with Grace.  He gives them a bum steer, for something about Grace appeals.  Tom negotiates with the town folk and after Grace demonstrates her willingness to work at the lowliest chores imaginable, they decide she can stay.

 

The movie is broken up into a prologue and nine parts, with each part being headed by a factual description of the segment.  To say that the sets are sparse would be an understatement; they are nearly non-existent.  The filming is in the style of the American TV soap operas of the 60s (perhaps even the 50s, I don’t remember), except there is even less on the set.  The fake walls themselves have been taken down and all that remains are lines drawn on the ground, labeled like a monopoly game.  The main street is named Elm, although there has never been any Elms in Dogville.

 

Lines are more stated than said, like readings from the bible during a church service.  They are meant to carry their own weight, with the actors humbly in the background.  The audience is commanded to look at the expression on the actors’ faces, for there is little else to see.  The camera shots are directly at the actors, with nothing competing for space or attention.  Every scene involves dialogue. The outdoors is represented by a silhouette of a leafless tree with a lone bird chirping.  This is the American depression of the 1930s, and you better believe it.

 

The townsfolk meet in the church, which hasn’t seen a service in years.  Like the town of Lago in Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter, this town has been abandoned by God and everybody who could leave.  Only the truly forsaken remain.

 

Grace is both a blessing and curse for the people of Dogville, she is both an opportunity for them to demonstrate their love of their fellow man, and a temptation to take advantage.  Throughout the movie she is transformed from a vestal virgin into a demon from hell and there is nobody to claim responsibility but the people of the town.  Having said that, the screenplay doesn’t condemn, but uses the microcosm to demonstrate at least one’s man’s view of the frailty of human nature; and the nature of karma.  Of reaping what we sow.

 

Grace goes to Dogville to escape her destiny and so she, too, is destined to failure.  In so doing, she throws herself at the feet of people who got the short end of a short stick called the Great Depression.  Indeed, every man in the movie looks like a character from a Steinbeck novel of the era.  Throughout the entire three hour length of the movie, the only things that move are either cars or various of the 15 actors.  The cars have three purposes, to carry police or gangsters, or to serve as a bed of violation.  The gangster cars, especially, are new, plush and shiny.  Each one as big as any house in the town.  They are the symbols of the outside, of the wheels of industry that have made some people rich, and left others behind.  The wheels that grind the weak into grist for the strong.

 

Like Chaplin’s’ Modern Times, everybody in the film is caught in the machine.  All are gears turning in a pre-determined pattern, interlocked, their futures as predictable as the shift whistle.  Like Chaplin’s’ heroine, the gamin Paulette Goddard, Grace throws herself on the mercy of the town and begs that they will do the right thing; not only for her own sake, but fore the sake of humanity.  Like Tennessee Williams’ Blanche, she is counting on the kindness of strangers, but in the end she is dragging the iron wheel of the old mill behind her like a ball and chain.  The only sound on the set is its scraping on the frozen ground as the snow falls on the silent town.  It is as impossible for Grace to escape into Dogville as it is for any of the town’s residents to escape out. 

 

As the pressure is turned up by the lies of the outside world, the people of Dogville react like the bosses on the assembly line.  They turn up the speed on their charge, just like the outside world has turned out the lights on them.  Tom Edison, who urged the town to take Grace in the first place, is losing control of the situation.  No more lights are shining, illuminating the way. The machine is spinning too fast for him to maintain control.  The sleeping devil in Grace is awakening.  Can he shut the machine off in time?

 

Excellent performances by Kidman and Bettany.  And great supporting performances by Ben Gazzara, Harriet Andersson, Lauren Bacall, Blair Brown, Philip Baker Hall, Chloe Sevigny and Stellan Skarsgard.  And excellent reading by John Hurt, who delivers the narrative as straight as a shot from a Missouri squirrel gun.

 

This movie has my recommendation, but for mature audiences only.  The R rating for sex and violence (emotional and physical) is for real.  Leave the kids at home.