Dogville is hard to care about. (Spoilers, maybe
) Despite a deeply empathetic performance from Nicole Kidman, I had no idea what von Trier was after. He brutalizes an actress, exposes the duplicitous, greedy underbelly of a town of small-minded inbreds (that not-so-clearly symbolizes 'Capitalism Run Amok = Slavery!'), then condemns his entire universe of characters those who survive, anyway to a future of amoral hopelessness.
His version of America? Who cares. All of this is surrounded by John Hurt's extraneous, should-have-been-deleted narration, which again and again tells us 'what's really happening' but never 'really' does. Other distancing (Brechtian) techniques abound: i.e., a marvelous town 'setting' which forces the audience to imagine time and space, yet the set is poorly, monotonously photographed, and ends up meaning nothing: we would have concentrated on these actors' faces regardless of the abstraction surrounding them. Re: the camera work: The famous 'Kubrick pullback' is used again and again, yet no von Trier pullback reveals any hidden truth or meaning at any given moment. So . von Trier is no Bertholt Brecht and certainly no Stanley Kubrick, but neither is he Friedrich Dürrenmat, whose plot of 'The Visit' Dogville is clearly lifted from. But there's no harm in derivation if cleverly done. Unfortunately, von Trier mires himself and us in murky political euro-symbolism that fails to illuminate his plot. There's a nifty revenge twist at the end, but it seems to have nothing to do with what's come before. Dogville may be disturbing and memorable, but it's a sophomoric effort at best. I'll watch von Trier in the future, but he's never been better than 'Zentropa (Europa)' and that was a long time ago. 4/10
His version of America? Who cares. All of this is surrounded by John Hurt's extraneous, should-have-been-deleted narration, which again and again tells us 'what's really happening' but never 'really' does. Other distancing (Brechtian) techniques abound: i.e., a marvelous town 'setting' which forces the audience to imagine time and space, yet the set is poorly, monotonously photographed, and ends up meaning nothing: we would have concentrated on these actors' faces regardless of the abstraction surrounding them. Re: the camera work: The famous 'Kubrick pullback' is used again and again, yet no von Trier pullback reveals any hidden truth or meaning at any given moment. So . von Trier is no Bertholt Brecht and certainly no Stanley Kubrick, but neither is he Friedrich Dürrenmat, whose plot of 'The Visit' Dogville is clearly lifted from. But there's no harm in derivation if cleverly done. Unfortunately, von Trier mires himself and us in murky political euro-symbolism that fails to illuminate his plot. There's a nifty revenge twist at the end, but it seems to have nothing to do with what's come before. Dogville may be disturbing and memorable, but it's a sophomoric effort at best. I'll watch von Trier in the future, but he's never been better than 'Zentropa (Europa)' and that was a long time ago. 4/10