DANCER IN THE DARK (Fine Line) Starring: Bjork, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare, Vincent Paterson, Cara Seymour, Vladica Kostic. Screenplay: Lars von Trier. Producer: Vibeka Windelov. Director: Lars von Trier. MPAA Rating: R (violence, adult themes) Running Time: 140 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
DANCER IN THE DARK is a masterwork by one of the most audaciously brilliant filmmakers working today ... or it's a huge, sick joke at the audience's expense. Or maybe it's both. You can't really put any motivation past Lars von Trier, a director whose fondness for rendering his own name in block letters four times larger than the film's title belies a certain streak of ego. This is a man who decided to write the rules for a new aesthetic of minimalist cinema with his Dogme '95 manifesto, then proceeded to break all those rules by making a live-action musical. It has become clear that you can predict virtually nothing about the way von Trier will try to make a movie, except that it will inspire extreme emotions. You may want to gasp, or cry, or smack him silly for dragging you along on his exercises in self-indulgence.
In DANCER IN THE DARK, von Trier takes at least three huge risks, and the two that pay off more than make up for the one that doesn't. His story is set in Washington state in 1964, where a Czechoslovakian emigree named Selma Jezkova (Bjork) is working as a machinist at a factory. A single mother raising her 12-year-old son Gene (Vladica Kostic), Selma devotes virtually all her time and energy to making money for a very important purpose. Gene needs an operation for a hereditary eye disorder -- the same one that is causing Selma to go blind. Only musicals can temporarily distract Selma from her mission -- watching one in a movie theater, performing in one in a local theatrical production, or imagining that the world around her is turning into one when life gets particularly grim. And it gets plenty grim when a conflict with her troubled landlord (David Morse) threatens Selma's money and her life.
The grimness of Selma's life is rendered in von Trier's favored washed-out morph of film and digital video -- Big Risk #1 -- but it's a tactical blunder for this particular script. DANCER IN THE DARK is fashioned as a melodrama, with developments that pit our morally pure heroine against dastardly forces. On glossy celluloid, such an old-fashioned narrative approach might have worked. The hand-held, documentary-style of DANCER IN THE DARK, however, demands a level of depth in the characters' motivations and relationships that isn't always there. Von Trier spends too much time on Selma's interaction with an unrequitedly infatuated admirer (Peter Stormare) while never bothering to explore his interest in her. That's time that could have been much better spent on the underdeveloped relationship between Selma and Gene, which should be central to the film. What are we to make of her obsession with his future needs while apparently ignoring his present, including truancy? It would have been possible to turn Selma's conflicted motivations into a compelling plot point. When a character is left to ask Selma, "Why did you have Gene?" you realize that von Trier has turned the son into an abstraction, and let the mother off too easy.
Such a gaping hole at the center should have killed DANCER IN THE DARK where it stood. Instead, it's still often dizzying, chilling and more engrossing than virtually any other film this year. Big Risk #2 was the casting of Bjork as Selma, and it's hard to do justice to how extraordinary her performance is. While her less-than-authentic Czech accent occasionally distracts, she hits every emotional note with such resonance that it's painful to watch her. And as painful as it is to watch, it's equally impossible not to watch when Big Risk #3 -- the musical production numbers -- kicks in. They're rendered as brightly-colored interpretations of Selma's interior life, inspired by the natural rhythms of a train's wheels, machinery and a record's run-out groove. Undoubtedly some viewers will find it impossible to get past the contrivance, or past Bjork's distinctive yodeling vocals. Others will be transfixed by the image of a killer fantasizing the forgiveness of the victim, or the most abruptly concluded musical number in film history.
Many critics have already noted that DANCER IN THE DARK bears more than a passing resemblance to von Trier's 1996 film BREAKING THE WAVES in its focus on the trials of a beatific female martyr. Indeed, Selma's sacrifice is not set up nearly so convincingly as that of Emily Watson's Bess, which can only make DANCER seem to suffer by comparison. That doesn't diminish what von Trier is able to accomplish this time around with another spectacular performance and more giddy disregard for expectations and conventions. DANCER IN THE DARK is a deeply flawed narrative that becomes a long sit during its third act; it's also studded with several moments of jaw-dropping brilliance. It's the work of a director who'll do anything to inspire a reaction. In a world of overly sanitized cinema, it's hard to dismiss that kind of raw nerve.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 blind chances: 7
Visit Scott Renshaw's Screening Room http://www.inconnect.com/~renshaw/ *** Subscribe to receive new reviews directly by email! See the Screening Room for details, or reply to this message with subject "Subscribe".
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews