D.C. MOVIE GUYS

BILL’S REVIEW: DOGVILLE     1/2

Lars von Trier’s movie Dogville possesses the kind of simple-minded hatred for this country that only the truly ignorant are capable of displaying. But von Trier’s contempt for the United States is dwarfed by that which he shows for his audiences. Anyone unlucky enough to find themselves subjected to Dogville will have to endure a near three hours of some of the most boring footage ever committed to film by a supposedly competent filmmaker.

Admittedly, admiration for von Trier’s work will always be a bit of a tough slog for me. Although he had made several movies in Denmark, he first became well known to art house audiences for Zentropa and Breaking the Waves. The latter is a ridiculously underwritten love story should be complimented for giving Emily Watson her first major role. His musical, Dancer in the Dark, drifted from shabby musical to anti-death penalty screed repeating points made better in movies such as Pennies From Heaven and Dead Man Walking. The sole advantage to the movie was that Bjork’s trials with Trier were so horribly draining that she has given up acting—someday this may be listed as the dreary Dane’s greatest contribution to the art. Although one of the founders of Dogma 95 (see below), his sole contribution as director was The Idiots, a charmer in which an underground acting troupe goes about Denmark impersonating people with a variety of mental and physical disabilities. We are supposed to be amused by the finding that “normal” people are made uncomfortable by people who disturb others with odd behavior. An accompanying documentary about the making of The Idiots has convinced me that the title refers to maestro von Trier and his acolytes. But the anger that I felt for The Idiots was a comparative walk through the dump compared to the experience of Dogville.

Nicole Kidman is Rose, a girl on the run, presumably from mobsters who follow her trail to the town of Dogville. There she finds refuge and as she is pretty and amiable, she fits in with the town’s odd lot including a pontificating philosopher (Paul Bettany), a sullen farmer (Stellan Skarsgard) and a slew of other types brought to what passes for life in a Trier flick by Lauren Bacall, Patricia Clarkson, and Ben Gazzara. As the insular folk of Dogville, a mining town in Depression-era Colorado, grow increasingly familiar with Rose they become contemptuous and finally abusive. Finally, the tables are turned as this simple-minded revenger story turns predictable concluding with a massacre and Trier’s credit sequence which marries a series of pictures showing America and Americans at their worst while David Bowie sings “Young Americans” (at least it is not Bjork). Perhaps von Trier would like to make a movie about Danish resistance to the Nazis during World War II—it would not take three hours.

But I have not even mentioned the best part. The whole three hours is played out on an empty stage with the actors are instructed to deliver their dreary lines with as little emotion as they are capable. The minutes creep by with monotonous tedium as the audience is left with little to do besides checking their watches and hope that release has moved a few seconds closer than the last check.

This sad affection he has for turning his leading ladies into doormats is most puzzling—even more so that anyone works with him once much less repeating the experience. That he can attract someone of Kidman’s stature with as sketchy a project as Dogville is mystifying. How does one follow treasure such as The Human Stain and Cold Mountain with such negligible tripe?

A great deal has been written about the concepts of Dogma 95 and since Dogville is so completely lacking in anything worth contemplating, perhaps we can finally blow taps on this silliness. Announced to puzzling fanfare, the signatories (most notably Trier) of “Dogma 95” vowed cinematic austerity, use handheld cameras, employ only natural sound and light, no extra-camera effects, etc. Why this would be considered a good thing was never explained (nor adequately questioned by those who should have known better). Von Trier, who revels in effects, seemed an odd person to lead the charge. The whole thing sounds as phony as the noble “von” that Trier stuck in his name. My personal speculation was that a bunch of drunks cobbled this silliness together early one morning mid-binge and could not own up afterwards. The fact that a few good movies such as Celebration, Mifune, and Open Hearts were produced under Dogma 95’s so-called purity standards are beside the point. Those movies would have been terrific even if they had been made with big budgets. The quality is in their writing and staging. Neither all the money in the world nor any number of ascetic purity standards would have made Julien Donkey Boy anything other than an incomprehensible mess.

It is hard to say just what part of Dogville is most offensive—although (as with Dancer in the Dark), I may resent being lectured on what is wrong with America by someone who has never been here. Trier is so tiresome that even people who may agree with him will find his celebration of the obvious tiresome.

With each movie by Lars von Trier, he proclaims that the only true idiots are the ones who pay any attention to his movies

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