BEFORE: Yesterday's film was a documentary, but I have not started another chain of docs. That was a one-off, because there were some documentaries that didn't seem to connect with the pack, and I'm watching them now in places where they can be most handy to me, to keep my chain going. I sort of did that with "I Am Big Bird" and "Being Elmo" earlier in the year - though I later found out that there were so many uncredited appearances in those films (not mentioned on the IMDB, that is) that I probably COULD have fit them in with the larger grouping of docs, if only I'd known. Same goes for "Fieldworker" - if the IMDB had properly listed all of the actors appearing in archive footage, it would have been a lot easier to link to it - it could have slipped in right between "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind" and "Jane Fonda in Five Acts", for example.
Ah, but then I wouldn't have been able to use it as the outro from "Revengeance", and then it wouldn't have been available for me to use as a link to "Dogville", so perhaps it's all for the best. These things do have a funny way of working out, don't they? I've got two more documentaries on the schedule for September, and again, they're providing important links to keep the chain alive. All other docs have been tabled until next year, at least.
Stellan Skarsgard carries over from "Filmworker" (so does Nicole Kidman, but she gets enough attention around here already - anyway, I didn't know until yesterday she appeared in "Filmworker" via archive footage, so this was always planned as a Skarsgard link.)
THE PLOT: A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado town. In exchange, she agrees to work for them. As a search visits the town, she finds out that their support has a price - yet her dangerous secret is never far away.
AFTER: OK, first thought on this movie is - WTF is this? This is three hours long, to start with, and then it turns out to be three hours of actors on a STAGE, pretending that they're in a town, though we can't see any of the houses, like the walls and the doors are all see-through, there are just floor plan outlines and the name of the street to tell us where the street is. The gooseberry bushes are just chalk circles on the stage, the dog is drawn on the floor (though we can hear him bark, and he's a major story element). There's furniture and props, but this is like some minimalist theater production, so WTF? I'm not familiar with the films of Lars von Trier, so are they all like this or is this just a one-off?
There is a story, of course, but even though I think I understand it, I'm hard-pressed to say what it all means, or why the story is being told in this very specific way. But before I go researching why it is the way it is, I want to take a stab at it, then I'll take a break, look it up on IMDB and Wikipedia, and then I'll come back here to determine if I was right or wrong. I think this is some kind of moral fable, a look at what humanity is really all about, using the residents of this small Depression-era (?) town as some kind of allegory for, umm, something. I think the point is that we're all a bunch of hypocrites (Americans, obviously, but all humans by extension) because we claim to be upright, moral people but I'm thinking that 99% of people are anything but. So there's the face that we put out to the world, where we pretend to be decent and Christian and god-fearing, but then when nobody's looking we're all a bunch of sinners. And that would be OK, everybody's a little selfish, a little gluttonous, a little horny or randy, but why can't we just admit it, and own up to it?
There's a stranger who wanders into town, naturally she's beautiful (that's important later on) and her arrival is prefaced by some gunshots in town, so even though she won't say what her backstory is, one can assume that it's nothing good. Some gangster-looking guys in a car are asking questions of the townspeople, to see if anyone has seen her - so if bad men are looking for her, we can assume that she's a good person, right? Actually, it's very annoying that she won't say anything about who she is or why she's hiding out - wouldn't that be exactly what everyone in town would ask her first?
But the male lead, Tom Edison Jr., appeals to the better nature of the townspeople (all 15 of them) and they agree to let her stay for two weeks, while they think on the matter further. Tom and Grace (the stranger) then set out to win the people over, by having Grace do odd jobs for them. This works, but perhaps a bit too well, because before long people are relying on Grace to take care of everything, and she's doing this for no pay, no compensation, just the promise that she could be accepted into the town, MAYBE.
This soon starts to feel like a form of slavery, or at least indentured servitude - and to make matters worse, we slowly learn that some of the men are taking further advantage of her, so she's like a de facto sex slave, but meanwhile Tom, who's enamored of her, can't seem to connect with her on a sexual level (she's probably tired from all the hard labor and sexual favors being performed all day long). Every so often, a law officer comes up the mountain to post a new reward poster for Grace, and even suggests that she might be a criminal on the loose. This creates another moral dilemma for the townspeople, if they're hiding a fugitive that's the wrong thing to do, but they're also benefiting from having her in town, plus they don't believe she's a criminal, so it also feels like the RIGHT thing to do.
OK, before I give away any significant spoilers, I'm going to break here and check out the deal about this film on the internet, to see what it all really means. Back in a sec....
So, what I've learned so far is that this bare-bones staging format is to keep the audience from getting distracted by the set pieces, so we can focus more on the acting and the storytelling. Well, that's a big fail, because I think I would be able to ignore the houses and the walls and the doors more if they were actually THERE, and the fact that they are NOT there, but the townspeople are all pretending that they are, is fairly distracting on its own. It's the first thing I noticed, the absence of the walls, the fact that people knock on where the door ISN'T but should be, and we still here a knocking sound. So if this is that distracting, overall, why do it?
The meaning of the film, according to Wikipedia, comes from director Lars von Trier, who said, "Evil can arise anywhere, as long as the situation is right." Geez, that sounds like the theme of "Billionaire Boys Club", where those douchey rich twenty-somethings were speculating about how much money they would accept to kill someone - obviously everyone has their price, or if there were a situation where you saw someone raping your mother, for example, you might be inclined to kill that person. But yeah, even in Dogville, small-town America, there's the potential for evil, that's sort of what I said before. People tend to lie about themselves, or turn a blind eye to their own faults, and then when they're in a position to help someone in need, they may turn that situation to their own advantage, and that's a slippery slope down to the Valley of Evil. Umm, I think?
Critics called this (among other things "A challenging piece of experimental filmmaking." (challenging is shorthand for "I didn't get it.") and "a potent parable of human suffering." Right, the human condition, which I said before, and it's all about suffering. This feels like the kind of film that actors all jump at the chance to appear in, and then audiences end up not understanding it. Dumb it down, OK? Stop being so damn "arty". Another critic called it "three hours of tedious experimentation." I feel your pain, anonymous critic, because I fell asleep after two hours and I had to finish it this morning before going to work. That's the kind of thing that will just make you late all day long in a sort of domino effect, trust me on this point.
It turns out there's a sequel, called "Manderlay", which is not three hours long, and it doesn't have Nicole Kidman in it, but another actress takes over her role. It does share some of the same actors as "Dogville", but apparently they play other roles in a different town. Great, now I have to stop and check to see if that film is available on demand or on Netflix or Hulu before I can move on with my chain. And if I decide to squeeze it in next, that means I'll have to drop something else....
Also starring Nicole Kidman (also carrying over from "Filmworker"), Paul Bettany (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Lauren Bacall (last heard in "Ernest & Celestine"), Chloe Sevigny (last seen in "The Snowman"), Udo Kier (last seen in "Downsizing"), Ben Gazzara (last seen in "Summer of Sam"), James Caan (last heard in "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2"), Patricia Clarkson (last seen in "Far From Heaven"), Shauna Shim, Jeremy Davies (last seen in "Secretary"), Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "People Like Us"), Blair Brown (last seen in "Altered States"), Zeljko Ivanek (last seen in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"), Harriet Andersson (last seen in "Trespassing Bergman"), Siobhan Fallon Hogan (last seen in "Holes"), Cleo King (last seen in "The Life of David Gale"), Miles Purinton, with the voice of John Hurt (last seen in "Owning Mahogany"), and a quick appearance by Richard Nixon (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts") in the closing credits.
RATING: 4 out of 10 polished glasses
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