Filmikaze!

By: Lars von Trier (director, writer)

Starring: Nicole Kidman, John Hurt, Lauren Bacall, Chloë Sevigny, Paul Bettany, Stellan Skarsgård, Udo Kier, James Caan, Shauna Shim, Patricia Clarkson, Jeremy Davies, Phillip Baker Hall, Ben Gazzara, Blair Brown, Željko Ivanek, Harriet Andersson

The beautiful fugitive, Grace, arrives in the isolated township of Dogville on the run from a team of gangsters. With some encouragement from Tom, the self-appointed town spokesman, the little community agrees to hide her and in return, Grace agrees to work for them. However, when a search sets in, the people of Dogville demand a better deal in exchange for the risk of harboring poor Grace and she learns the hard way that in this town, goodness is relative. But Grace has a secret and it is a dangerous one. Dogville may regret it ever began to bare its teeth…

Dogville is the third of Lars von Trier’s films I’ve seen, and has solidified him in my mind as one of the most formidable contemporary filmmaking talents in the world. An American fable on a pared down set, Dogville is raw and moving and incredibly memorable. This is the sort of film you finish watching and have to simply sit back for awhile to marvel at it. In a word, it’s fantastic, and undoubtedly one of the best films made since the turn of the 21st century.

Dogville was filmed much like a play: entirely on a single sound stage with extremely minimal set and props. The walls are indicated by chalk-like marks on the floor, and much of the physical aspects of moving amongst the town is mimed by the actors. This alone should make it pretentious, but doesn’t; the actors are so talented and the story so frank that there’s no room for much self-importance, here. It’s a sparse but convincing portrait of humanity, a sort of fairy tale turned sour. Honestly, I’m sitting here still in awe of how Von Trier always manages to make his films simultaneously unassuming and powerful. So far he has never failed to give me something worth thinking about.