Brecht's Dogpatch

DOGVILLE ( 2003 )

BRECHT'S DOGPATCH

Lars Von Trier, the 47 year old ditsy Danish director, once dubbed the enfant terrible, as he directed his first film at 21 years old, has placed into the mainstream of celluloid a film that manages to be anti-film, anti-humanity, anti-artistic, and anti-artifice as it passes itself off as artistic endeavor.

Was this film a religious allegory, a morality play, or just the germ of an idea that aborted as it came to full term ? Yes, comes the thunderous answer, and more, and less. But one thing is abundantly clear..."Something is rotten in the State of Denmark.". Like Roger Ebert, I found myself while viewing this movie constantly glancing at my watch to see if it had stopped, and working hard to stay with this three hour stillborn pedantic snoozefest.

Ebert stated," VonTrier exhibits the imagination of an artist, but the pendantry of a crank...it's a good idea that went wrong...seems to be a raving prophet on a streetcorner.".

The choice of a minimalist set, a sparse world for the word play, just fat chalk lines and assorted props,was not innovative; rather it was enervative, actually sapping the vigor of the piece and substantially reducing its vitality.

It has been suggested the VonTrier, a guiding force behind the Dogme Movement, feels that as an artist it is his job to alienate, to shock, to outrage, and to confuse his audience. Like his demi-god Bertolt Brecht...he seems to try to break the illusion that comes from developing feeling for a character.

Oh, young Lars...how clever, how existential, how obtuse, how complex and confusing, and how much like Satre and Genet thee labors try to be. Von Trier, as writer, creates dialogue that would drive an insomniac crashing into slumber, flat non-sequiturs that lead lethargically from one dead end thought to another.

This film outraged me. But oddly, I also treasured the excruciating experience. I was a witness to both a travesty and a pivotal sad form of greatness. VonTrier is so arrogant that he seems to believe that he needs to pummel down the conventions of film, and create a whole new form. But he works fitfully like a mentally deranged amateur, who miraculously keeps getting the financial backing and critical acclaim necessary to persevere, to continue insulting, titulating, and outraging his audience.

Actually, Von Trier's basic premise is a workable one, I just felt that his hubris prevented him from creating something cohesive. I do not question his imagination, his creative instincts as an artist, but I do question...I do confront and challenge his alledged skill as a writer, director, and camera operator. His Dogme principles of natural lighting, poorly planned and poorly executed camera angles, and hand-held jerky documentarian utilization of his camera, are leagues short of successful composition or cinematic closure.

When I saw DANCER IN THE DARK, the theater actually had to post a sign warning of the possibility of audience motion sickness during the first thirty minutes of the movie. Admittedly, there is less arbitrary jerkiness in DOGVILLE, but his point of view choices were sophmoric and claustophobic.

He shot the film on a sound stage in Copenhagen. A stage, I'm certain that was equipped with the state-of-the-art cranes, stedi-cams, tracks, and mulitiple cameras. He did open, and include a couple of overhead establishing shots, but the following scenes seemed artitrary and sparse beyond measure.

Perhaps the crux of my criticism comes down to VonTriers lack of respect, his lack of love for his audience. As an audience member, I felt disrespected and unloved. Yes, a film can be philosophical, instructive, or moral, without rigorouslly disrespecting either its characters or distancing its audience.

Perhaps Von Trier needed to present this concept as a theatrical piece, in a theatre. It might then strike some absurd innovative chord if it was experienced live. As a piece of film, though, and as a cinematic experience, there was no blending of the two genre...there was just an irritation, a discomfort for me because my sense of place, the world of the play, was left nebulous. Therefore there was no inkling of a state of suspended belief, nothing presented that could be sustained as applicable to the human condition.

Most of us attend movies to be stimulated, to learn something new, to travel, to hear the lilt of clever dialogue, to observe the raw beauty of flawles scinematography, and to be moved emotionally...and possibly to be entertained as well; but in this day and age there is so much "entertainment" outside of a theatre, I long for something more when inside one. But clearly before one can respond emotionally, there has to be an investment of caring.

If you do not get acquainted with a character, and then something tragic happens to that character, you are adrift and non-vested...it is happening to a stranger; there is no sting, no sense of personal identification, no connection to our hearts and minds.

And this is the pervue, the barren mad landscape of Lars Von Trier, a virtual Netherland of wandering zombies who demand our attention, but who resist our overtures for clarification of thought, plot, and action. His dialogue is flat, uninspired, preachy, colorless, and monotone...gray, gray, gray. His actors are forced to mouth it like it was month old bread; stale, dry, and tasteless. There were some exceptions, tiny ones, but three hours of conversations is a lot to weather without even a hint of cleverness.

Vera: I believe smashing them (lovely Hummel figurines that Grace treasures) is less a crime than making them. I am going to break two of your figurines first, and if you can demonstrate your knowledge of theDoctrine of Stoicism by holding back your tears, I'll stop.

Later in the film, Grace says to The Big Man:There's a family with kids. Do the kids, and make the mother watch. Tell her you'll stop if she can hold back her tears. I "owe" her that.

I found myself pining for the words of Faulkner or Horton Foote; for a real sense of the Great Depression overlapping and imprinting on the story. I think the film needed to be in black and white, and there needed to be realistic sets, and there needed to be movement and scope, and a hint of reality; like in the filmTOMORROW (1972) with Robert Duvall, or TO KILL AMOCKINGBIRD (1962), or THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1939). ForI wanted to, I needed to care for those characters, so that when they met their tragic fate, I would be allowed a modicum of empathy. If you are to teach me something, I learn best when my heart is touched. I wanted Dogville, Colorado to seem like a real place, where actual people lived out their lives of leaden-eyed desparation.

Art does not give a license for the creation of bad work, and someone needs to cry out against the promulgation of that bad work as innovation, or God help us...masterpiece. Street theater abounds everywhere, and most of it is pretty bad, barely watchable; but one can walk by, or turn away from it. You could have a baseball team play their games naked while on pogosticks...but the purity of the game, that is almost an art form, would be soundly violated.

One could smear feces on a canvas, and pass it off as modern art...yet it would still remain solid intestinal waste. As my grandfather was fond of saying, "Do not piss down my back, and try to tell me it israining.".

This cast was a power house, albeit mostly wasted on the mundane material; a whirlwind blend of bankable stars that were willing to take chances for their art, and veteran stars that were glad to get the work. It has been said that Von Trier usually feels paranoic, feels that his cast conspires against him. There was a documentary completed about the making of DOGVILLE, in which the cast members could ventilate, and express their true feelings. There was a "safe room" created, where they could speak frankly and honestly. I believe that documentary film would be easily twice as interesting as this maniacal epoch.

Nicole Kidman as Grace, the gangster's daughter, the sacrificial lamb, was very effective. She seemed willing to do anything asked of her, regardless of how degrading it might be, to please the master, the director Von Trier. Her role will be memorable, more for its outrageousness than for its integral value or artistic merit. Her performances in THE HUMAN STAIN,THE OTHERS, THE HOURS, & COLD MOUNTAIN, all outshine and eclipse this one.

She was fine as Grace, better than most actresses would have been. Those images of her passiveness, her acceptance of her brutal rapes, and that dog collar around her neck chained to that massive steel wheel as she dragged it around after her, and her transition into righteous glee after she decided on .45 caliber retribution for her tormenters...all stick with me, haunt me, and nestle deep into the icons from other films I covet, and carry with me.

Paul Bettany was appropriately enigmatic, shallow, hypocritical, and self-serving as young Tom Edison. He is presented as a possible protagonist, a probable hero; but he emerged as a weakling, a coward...just lusty, opportunistic, self-inflated and lonely. As Grace became a thing abused, and she was raped repeatedly by every man in town...Tom was left out of the carnal loop. When he broached the subject with her, she spoke from out of her exhaustion, telling him to pleasure himself if he really needed to, but that in her heart she had hoped for something better, something more from him. This stopped Tom cold. He knew what he was, and still tried to hide it from her.

Stellen Skarsgard, who played Chuck, the keeper of the orchard, was quoted as saying," Von Trier is a hyper-intelligent child, who is slightly disturbed, playing with dolls in a doll house, and cutting their heads off with a nail clipper." His character, Chuck, was pivotal to the patchwork plot. He was the cynic, hiding in plain sight, procreating beyond his ability to care for his prodigy, and it was he that first lusted openly after Grace, and it was he that raped her first, with the police outside, molesting her when he knew that she could not scream or struggle. Actually that scene was the only time for me the minimalist set worked. There was Skarsgard's bare derriere rising and falling on Grace in cathartic copulation, and juxtaposed to it were the fine folk of this almost-town, going about their business oblivious to the horror and tragedy being perpetrated right under their ignorant noses. This single strident note of supreme apathy seemed clarion to me, midst all the other muddle and tedium.

[After Chuck sees Grace teaching his kids]
Chuck: How is it going otherwise with the fooling act?
Grace: I wasn't trying to fool anyone.
Chuck: I mean Dogville. Has it got you fooled yet?
Grace: I thought you were implying that I was trying to exploit the town.
Chuck: Wishful thinking. This town is rotten from the inside out and I wouldn't miss it if it fell into the gorge tomorrow. I see no charm here. But you seem to. Admit it, you've fallen for Dogville. The trees, the mountains, the simple folk. And if all that ain't got you fooled yet, I bet the cinnamon has. That damned cinnamon in those gooseberry pies. Dogville has everything that you ever dreamed of in the big city.
Grace: You're worse than Tom. How do you know what I dreamed of? You're from the city yourself, aren't you?
Chuck: That was a long time ago. I'm not that stupid anymore. I've found out that people are the same all over. Greedy as animals. In a small town they're just a bit less successful. Feed 'em enough, they'll eat till their bellies burst.
Grace: That's why you want to get rid of me. Because you can't stand that I remind you of what it was you came here to find.

John Hurt as the narrator, as the omniscient omnipresent entity, droned on in a theatrical monotone about the "good people" of Dogville. Was he chorus, demon, or godhead? Perhaps some of all three. His presence strengthened the sense of religious allegory, but I longed to see him, in the flesh. To be like the narrator in OUR TOWN, letting us see him interacting with the others, having some position, some vocation within the community.

James Caan as the Big Man, the enforcer, played his scenes quietly, draped behind the black curtains on the windows of his tall black sedan, dressed in blackwith a white scarf prominent...conjuring up imagery of priests and confessionals, as Grace went through her ransition from victim to vindictive force. He was very effective, effortlessly emulating his roles of the past, creating a solid presence with a minimum of effort.

Lauren Bacall as Ma Ginger escaped the spotlight. It was grand to see the veteran actress there in the muddled mileau, but she was given nothing to do. And just about any other older actress could have been exchanged for her. Ben Gazzara as blind Jack McKay performed well as the randy grizzled loner, who soon tired of Grace reading to him, and reached for her bruised thighs along with the rest of the men. Blair Brown as Mrs. Hanson, quite portly and matronly these days, was hardly recognizable as that svelte energetic actress who played the romantic interest with William Hurt in ALTERED STATES (1980). Patricia Clarkson as Vera did an exceptional job, and she created a real person, a plain weepy mother of seven, probably frigid...only willing to copulate to create more children; flawed, ignorant, fearful, vindictive, and emotional. Her seven children contrasted to the seven Hummel figurines were a nice literary touch, almost a motiff.

Jeremy Davies as Bill Hudson is no stranger to off-center roles,[view HOLLYWOOD HOTEL, or THE LOCUSTS, or catch him as Charles Manson in the latest remake of HELTER SKELTER]. His portrayal of the town dummy remained mostly in the peripherary of the flow of the action. His eccentricity, as an actor, served him well. But the role required little of him, and he responded in kind.

Zeljko Ivanek gave us a dark unwashed disturbing performance as Ben, the truck driver. He was one of the only links the town had to the outside world. Ivanek is a fine actor, who began his career in films like MASS APPEAL with Jack Lemmon, and recently was a head villian on the first seaon of Keifer Sutherlands series: 24. Philip Baker Hall sat, and walked through his role of Tom Edison Sr, barely making a ripple in the big pond. He, too, was underused, and thus aspired only to under achievement, to become a faceless fabric in the weave of this murmering mosaic of townsfolk.

Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" magazine wrote,"This film is light years from the formula doggerel at the multiplexes, and it delivers something rare these days; a film of ideas."

I can only ponder on the very nature of mankind. Man as an organism on this plane of existence can only process our environment through our perceptions, and our individual perceptions are colored and influenced by our life experiences; and possibley our past lives' experiences, our genetic DNA memory.

This film's ratings have swung from Ebert's 2 stars, to Traver's 3.5 stars. I would rate it at 2.5 stars, worth the watch if one has the energy. One value to film discussion, or reading film criticism, is that someone else's perceptions might alter our own, someone else's passion might overide our own cynicism or lethargy. Personally, I try not to recommend a film to a friend. Sometimes after they see the film, they end up disliking, even hating the movie. I used to puff up and counter with," ForChrist's sake, do you have eyes? Did we see the same film?" Well, wonder of wonders, I am beginning to understand that no two people can see, can perceive the same film the same way. That is how it is, and artistically how it should be. So attend on, and rave on, you masses of film lovers, and I will continue to search for my place at the table.

Glenn Buttkus 2003