Film Review of Dogville
Year: 2003 Reviewer: Chris Docker
‘Dogville' is one of those films that is very hard work for the first hour, but if you stay with it, it will grab hold of your insides and turn them inside out. It tells the story of a young woman played by Kidman, apparently on the run. She stumbles into a small outback village where the people take her in and conceal her identity. Through blackmail, the villagers increasingly take advantage of her - to put it mildly - unaware of the terrible secret she holds inside her. The film is shot on a bare stage with minimum props, but after an hour or so you not only cease to notice this but get pulled into the symbolic struggles that are going on. On the surface, the film forces audiences to confront their own moral sore spots, but on a profounder level it is a heavy criticism of modern day American foreign policy.
This post-Dogme film-as-art is one of the most successful attempts by the new wave of Danish filmmakers. The at-first quirky techniques are fully justified - not only by the skill with which the audience is drawn in, but by their constructual relevance: the stage-iness of the film, together with the well-chosen names of the characters (Grace, Gloria, Vera) emphasise the symbolic significance of the dramas played out before us and leave any intelligent viewer little room to say this is mere entertainment. Moral sympathies are unnervingly switched, yet the film doesn't preach. Many people may misunderstand it, especially if the word 'genius' is applied to von Trier's climactic effort. But the film works as art, alerting us to dangers of the human character within us all, neither judging - or more importantly - justifying.
Rating: 9/10
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