Had I paid more attention, I would not have chased the weirdest David Lynch movie I've seen with a Lars von Trier piece. Still, this was one of those culturally significant pictures I'd been putting off for some time.
In what might be the '30s, a stranger named Grace (Nicole Kidman) comes to a remote Colorado town, planning to cross the nearby mountain until local would-be writer Tom (Paul Bettany) sees her and advises against it. Not knowing a better way to elude a gang looking for her, she begs sanctuary. Tom talks all his skeptical neighbors into keeping mum for a period and then deciding whether to send her away. Grace endears herself to them with chores, and for a while, she and the town brighten up each other. But when authorities under the gang's sway announce that she's wanted for crimes, although she couldn't possibly have committed them, the townsfolk become less content with lying to the law and subsequently make life increasingly hard for Grace.
Nobody had warned me about the visual style: Even plays are rarely so abstract. The "town" is a sound stage with chalk outlines where the walls should be and labels for each structure. There's furniture and a few doors, but more often, we see someone open nothing and hear an added sound effect. The "sky" is always white or pitch black. Yet the motor vehicles are real; go figure. If I didn't know better going in, I'd think I was about to see a whimsical comedy. (It doesn't help that Tom's full name is Thomas Edison, Jr., but his father doesn't appear to be that one.) After nearly three hours, I'd almost forgotten how a normal town looked. If the style has a point besides being unique and artsy-fartsy, it's the suggestion of transparency, with few secrets among the small population.
Further artistry appears in the form of chapter divisions, with titles presented along with summaries of what's to come. Adding to the pseudo-literary format is the frequent narration of John Hurt, which sounds pretty soothing but less like Max von Sydow than C.S. Lewis. Some of the cheerier things he says drip with irony.
To my mind, the greatest value of the film comes in the demonstration of how people might become terrible without realizing it. The Dogville citizens (whose actors include Lauren Bacall, Stellan Skarsgård, Ben Gazzara, and James Caan) start out mostly wishing to keep to themselves, until Tom encourages them to act on the virtues they claim to espouse -- apart from honesty and legality in certain contexts, of course. Perhaps the demand for certain sins inspires them to indulge in others. By and by, they become blackmailers, backstabbers, slavers, rapists, and general ingrates, yet their perception of themselves doesn't appear to change. Sometimes they say obviously untrue things, but are they bad liars or doublethinkers? Can they conceive of a world in which they're wrong? Mind you, these people aren't all alike in personality or demographics. Even pastor-esque Tom, with his mutual crush on Grace, ultimately does grievous wrong by her.
Grace largely takes Dogville with the patience of a saint. When she finds her treatment unbearable, she still doesn't get angry. (I think von Trier has a thing for this.) Only in the last scene does she pass judgment.
That scene bothers me for two reasons. First, a twist of logic tries to persuade us that the true arrogance lies in NOT judging people, at least when they do something you wouldn't forgive yourself for doing. Sorry, but I refuse to take a lesson on arrogance from one of the most arrogant auteurs in the world. Second, Grace does something even worse than the antihero of Europa. Let's just say that if von Trier ever planned on a sequel, it wasn't to Dogville. Are we to agree with her decision? If so, I only hope I understand correctly that she considers it an especially bad town, because otherwise, it's the most misanthropic movie I can remember seeing. No wonder reactions are so mixed.
And with that sordid conclusion, I have decided never to watch another von Trier work. He can be entertaining, but his mores sorely leave something to be desired.
No comments:
Post a Comment