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DOGVILLE : BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE
(warning : contains minor spoilers)
“Lars
is mad as a brush,” he splutters. “It’s all about him.
You don’t give a performance at all. Literally the only direction
he gives you is: ‘Down 200 per cent. Up five per cent. Now shout
it. Now do it quietly. You are mixing colours for Jackson Pollock. That’s
all you’re doing.”
On one occasion, actor and director had a full-on stand-off. “I refused
to shoot a scene because he wouldn’t discuss it first. He got the
camera rolling and I’m saying, ‘No, I’m not doing it. I
don’t understand it.’ He said: ‘Just say the fucking line,
Paul. Come on, I will shake the camera around, it will look real. I’ve
been getting away with it for years.’ “
interview with
Paul Bettany by Ryan Gilbey, The Independent, 21st November 2003
He
who lives by the palme d’or dies by the palme d’or: having
become ‘king of the (arthouse) world’ at Cannes 2000 with Dancer
in the Dark, Lars ‘von’ Trier was brought down several pegs on
the same Croisette two years later when his massively hyped and much-delayed
new movie went home conspicuously empty-handed: more doghouse than
Dogville, in fact. A jury universally expected to give the Best
Actress award to the film’s star Nicole Kidman instead pointedly chose
Marie-Josee Croze from The
Barbarian Invasions – a fine performance, but in a supporting
role much more minor than any previous recipient of a Cannes acting prize.
Plans
for Dogville’s worldwide distribution were immediately thrown into
chaos: its US release was shifted from 2003 to 2004, with talk of Trier,
who had reportedly spent almost of a year on post-production already,
returning to the editing suite cut between 30 and 45 minutes out of the
three-hour running time – (apparently the amusingly Yank-baiting end credits
– David Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’ over classic photographs of poverty-stricken
US citizens – are for the chop.)
No
film, of course, should take so long to knock into shape, and Trier and
his many backers (the film is officially an eleven-country co-production!)
surely realise as much. There’s far too much riding on Dogville for
it to be given up a bad lot, however. Trier’s reputation hangs in the
balance, and he’s too hubristic to admit any kind of defeat: Dogville
is supposedly the start of his third trilogy (‘U.S.A.’ following ‘Europa’
and ‘Golden-Heart’), and there’s also the small matter of the Ring Cycle
which he’s set to direct at Bayreuth 2006.
Unfortunately
for all concerned, Dogville isn’t really worth all this
bother. The film has many incidental pleasures – and ends well - but is
so woefully, self-indulgently overlong that lopping off 45 minutes probably
isn’t going to make much difference. A much more radical edit is required,
down to around 90-100 minutes, but even this probably won’t address the
fundamental problems of the unconvincing, contrived, schematic story (which
doesn’t hold up even as allegory) and its ostentatiously arty and slow
execution.
The
film is divided into nine chapters and a prologue. In the 1930s, a mysterious
young woman named Grace Mulligan (Kidman) takes refuge in the tiny Rocky
Mountain town – barely even a village – of Dogville, home to idealistic
would-be writer Tom Edison (Paul Bettany). Edison welcomes the stranger,
who seems to be on the run from murderous gangsters, and after initial
uncertainty his fellow townsfolk also prove accepting. But it isn’t long
before their ingrained suspicion of outsiders starts colouring their view
of the apparently innocent and pure Grace – and gradually her life becomes
a nightmarish ordeal of physical and mental oppression and exploitation…
Shot entirely
on a single sound-stage, with the town’s streets and houses marked out
in white paint, Dogville is essentially a filmed play – with copious
narration provided by an unseen John Hurt. Though Hurt’s wry contributions
are entertaining and amusing (if Eddie Murphy can be Oscar-campaigned
for Shrek, Hurt deserves no less), the narration is wildly overused
– the classic symptom of something having gone badly wrong in the storytelling
process. It’s reminiscent of what Terrence Malick did when he realised
Days of Heaven wasn’t working, and he ended up tinkering to such
a degree that Linda Manz’s voice-over overwhelmed the actors’ performances.
And it isn’t even as if there’s any kind of ironic disparity between narration
and action (as in, say, Malick’s Badlands): Trier, via Hurt, merely
bombards us with superfluous explication and description.
We’re provided
with endless material for analysis and discussion, and some critics have
taken the bait, racking up many column inches analysing Trier’s debts
to Brecht, debating the film’s supposed ‘anti-Americanism’, teasing out
countless allegorical interpretations, and pondering whether Grace’s travails
are intended to represent the life of Christ (if so, her actions towards
the end would make her a very ‘Old Testament’ Jesus, if that makes any
sense). And once again, with his heroine enduring all kinds of indignities
and affronts, there’s the misogyny question – though a more pressing issue
is surely to ask when, if ever, he’s going to move on and tell a different
story than ‘innocent cutie gets put through the wringer.’
Approaching
Trier on the level of ideas has always been a mistake, however, and it’s
one that fewer and fewer people seem to be making. Given Trier’s track
record, Dogville might more profitably be addressed as a parody
of anti-Americanism (check out the cheesily over-appropriate photo
that accompanies Bowie’s mention of ‘President Nixon’ in the credits)
and/or a parody of Brecht, and/or a parody of the Christ myth and/or a
parody of misogyny.
Since
Peter Greenaway fell from critical favour around the time of Prospero’s
Books (1991), there’s been a magus-shaped hole in European cinema
and the opportunistic Trier is all too happy to jump into the gap (the
equally phoney Stanley Kubrick performed a similar function in worldwide
cinema for many years). But while his films are more interesting and watchable
than Greenaway’s over-cooked, over-intellectualised efforts, Trier – who,
by contrast, seems to throw his elaborate movies together according to
the dictates of his whims - is essentially a prankster, a showman, a fraud.
Even his name is a joke*.
Being
a charlatan isn’t such a bad thing, however, so long as everyone is in
on the gag: this is what makes Dancer in the Dark – which parodies
both musical melodrama and the American legal system – such a one-off
crazy masterpiece which the average run of sensible, well-behaved arthouse
film-makers could dream of emulating. Dogville, however, is essentially
no more serious than relatively ‘disreputable’ horror flicks like Jack
Clayton’s 1982 Ray Bradbury adaptation Something Wicked This Way Comes,
or the 1994 movie (directed by Fraser C Heston) of Stephen King’s Needful
Things, in which a mysterious, possibly satanic figure (Jonathan Pryce
/ Max Von Sydow) arrives in a small American town and slowly exposes
the hypocrisies behind its citizens’ respectable facades. A more benign
variation is George Pal’s underrated 7 Faces of Dr Lao from 1963.
The
film has the patina of respectability – thanks in no small part to a cast
that includes a genuine bona-fide megastar, albeit one with a track record
of pretentious dabbling in pseudo-arty projects (Kidman), some seen-in-all,
understandably (and visibly) bemused American veterans (Lauren Bacall,
James Caan), a rising star keen to impress (Bettany) plus a handful of
Trier’s regular partners-in-crime (Stellan Skarsgard, Udo Kier, Jean-Marc
Barr). The contributions of cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle shouldn’t
be underestimated – his already-famous ‘apples’ shot really does live
up to the hype. Such factors have led some observers to commit the cardinal
error of taking Trier seriously – treating his latest amusingly crackpot
melodrama Dogville as a fascinatingly complex work of art chock-full
of allegory and meaning. But they’re well and truly barking up the wrong
tree.
There are many
incidental pleasures in this film – including, crucially, the climax,
which features an extremely effective and satisfying twist. This is where
Trier really reveals himself – as gleefully cruel as the Machiavellian
Pryce and Von Sydow characters, but more infantile in his maliciousness.
You’re tempted to applaud such brazenly nasty audacity and forgive all
the film’s flaws – especially as it ends with such a terrifically witty
final shot, which it wouldn’t be fair to give away here (except to say
that it’s a zoom towards a previously invisible character suddenly becomes
visible for a few brief seconds.)
Trier
now probably realises that he’s been rumbled. Could this be the beginning
of the end? It’ll be interesting to see where he goes from here: intriguingly,
Nicole Kidman – who’s very savvy about such matters – bailed out of Manderlay,
the second episode in the ‘U.S.A’ trilogy, soon after the Cannes debacle.
As Greenaway discovered, the tastes of the arthouse world can be as barbarically
fickle as the sympathies of Dogville’s citizens. And, unlike his put-upon
heroine, Trier won’t be able to rely on daddy to save him from
the baying mob.
For a review
of the making of Dogville - Dogville
Confessions click here
by Neil
Young
16th – 17th November, 2003
with thanks to Jan Lumholdt, editor of Lars
Von Trier : Interviews
* Exactly how
and when Trier became von Trier is a topic of some dispute. The name probably
came from an uncle who by mistake was called von Trier on a visit to Germany,
an event that became a running joke in the Trier family. The younger Trier’s
definitive rechristening is said to have taken place at film school. After
one of the teachers, Gert Fredholm, got annoyed at some of the students
among them Trier when they wouldn’t leave the editing room in the
evenings. Fredholm supposedly pointed out: “You’re behaving like arrogant,
provincial gentry. Why don’t you add a to your names while you’re at
it?” Which Trier immediately proceeded to do. However, the name ‘Lars
von Trier’ already appears in the credits of the pre-film school works
Orchidégartneren/The Orchid Gardner and Menthe la bienheureuse.
- Jan Lumholdt
nb
– my acknowledgement to Mr Lumholdt and my reproduction of the source
of the “von” explanation should in no way be taken as an endorsement by
Mr Lumholdt of the views expressed by myself in the above article.
-
Neil Young
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