Dogville (2003)

☆ ☆ ☆

Dogville (2003) – L. Von Trier

There’s a perennial question, about the artist whose choices in their personal life are so unspeakably bad that they contaminate appreciation of their art, that is increasingly relevant (or in the news) today.  However, I’m not sure a distinction can be made when it comes to Lars von Trier, whose choices in the artworks themselves are so questionable, even despicable, that the fact that he might also be a jerk personally seems beside the point.  His latest film at Cannes drove over 100 people out of the theatre because of its extreme violence toward women and children (and this, after he was only just allowed back to the festival when his banishment for appreciating Hitler ended).  His cultivated image is of “the provocateur” but he seems more of a poseur to me.  So, why did I give Dogville a chance?  Perhaps because of its reputation as an experimental film, with its sparse warehouse set, representing a small Colorado town with just a few pieces of lumber and some chalk outlines for houses on the floor (think Our Town).  That’s about all I knew.  As the film began and I found out that John Hurt narrates the entire film, alternating with some spoken dialogue from the characters, I found it sufficiently intriguing to keep watching.  Nicole Kidman plays a woman, fleeing from mobsters, who takes shelter in the town.  They have a community vote to decide whether to let her stay (after a two week trial where she works for each family to try to impress them).  Of course, she does get to stay but as the mobsters and the police close the dragnet, the “costs” of keeping her in the town and the price the townsfolk demand from Kidman increases.  Eventually, Kidman becomes the target of abuse, since she isn’t from there.  So, misogyny charges against von Trier are more or less fulfilled (again).  Kidman said she wouldn’t work with him again to boot.  And it isn’t quite clear where the experiment took us (the viewers) -- some read this as “anti-American” (since von Trier refuses to come to the US) and the use of David Bowie’s “Young Americans” over the ending credits seems to bear this out.  I saw it as a sadistic game of “chicken”, taunting the audience about just how far he was willing to go (to shock), and a sardonic repudiation of Dogme 95 trying to be as artificial as possible, as if to poke a finger in the eye of anyone who bothered to take him seriously back then (when he issued his philosophical filmmaker’s manifesto).  Although there is no denying that he has a certain degree of artistic know-how, let’s hope no one bothers to take von Trier seriously again.