Dogville Movie Review:


Von Trier hits us squarely between the eyes with another tale about a fiercely tough and horrifically tortured heroine (see also Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark). This one is about Grace (Kidman), a woman who wanders into the isolated Rocky Mountain hamlet of Dogville during the Depression. The town's residents don't know what to make of her, but young Tom (Bettany) urges them to give her a chance. After two weeks she's part of the fabric of village life, helping Vera (Clarkson) teach an increasing brood of children and assisting her husband (Skarsgard) in the apple orchard; working with Liz (Sevigny) and her mother (Brown) in the family business, while teaching her brother (Davies) how to play chess; being eyes to a blind man (Gazzara), hands to a shop owner (Bacall), a page-turner to an organist (Hogan) and a mother to a loner (Ivanek). And of course, she's a muse to the budding writer Tom, while helping his hypochondriac father (Hall) come to terms with his health. It's all going very nicely until the townsfolk hear that she's wanted by the police. Suddenly, the darker side of human nature rears its ugly head.

On the surface this is a film about violence and intolerance in society--America to be specific. Von Trier's brilliant script peels back layers as it examines these upstanding people who struggle to control lusts and urges--then deny there's any problem. As the events escalate, the whole situation takes on almost biblical proportions (and refuses to let those outside America off the hook). This is realised on screen in a strikingly original cinematic style that draws on Thornton Wilder's Our Town with its knowing narrator (Hurt) and a set made of almost nothing! Lines on the floor show where the streets and houses sit, with sparse props and labels everywhere to tell us what's what. Besides the obvious metaphorical and theatrical implications, it looks absolutely stunning on screen. We can see through walls as Von Trier's camera whirls around the action, edited together in sometimes jarring ways that focus our attention on both details and subtext.

Meanwhile the cast is impeccable. Bettany shines as the town's spokesman--a wannabe philosopher who isn't equipped by his upbringing to do the right thing. Clarkson gets a couple of very strong scenes (not nearly enough) as a woman who jumps to all the wrong conclusions. And Caan's one scene is marvellously disorienting--and so telling it almost hurts to watch. But this is Kidman's film, and she delivers an astonishing performance--brittle, innocent, resilient and tenacious. She's the town's conscience, and Dogville does not like it. When in the end her character finally makes sense on a larger scale, which makes the final scene that much more shocking and yet true. This is uncompromising filmmaking that's both artistic and powerfully entertaining. Don't miss it.

Rich Cline

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