Dogville(2003)

This is the sad tale of the township of Dogville.

Twelve angry men, a 1957 Hollywood classic by Sidney Lumet, is a film that tells the story of 12 jurors who in their hands lay the life of a teenage boy accused of killing his father. The film began with 11 out of the 12 men convinced that the boy is indeed guilty of the murder and it ultimately ended in the classical Hollywood fashion where the boy was unanimously voted, after heated discussion of the testimonies and evidences, not guilty beyond reasonable doubt. This film spent approximately 88 out of its 96 minutes of screen time inside the jury room. With its minimal set and dialogue-driven plot, I consider this film a textbook example of how characterization effectively influences the spectator’s viewing experience. We as viewer, are compelled and absorbed by the film as each character unfolds before us, bringing them to life as the plot progresses. This film review, however, is not about that film. Instead, this is about Dogville.

Dogville is the first film in Lars von Trier’s USA: Land of Opportunities trilogy (Manderlay(2005) and Wasington(not yet filmed) are the two other films in the planned trilogy). It is notable for its atypical style, particularly the mise-en-scène. The theatre inspired staging features no walls, no roofs, no doors—everything else in Dogville, except for some few important props, is left for our imagination. Through this, Lars von Trier effectively brought us into the heart of Dogville—its people. Similar to how the film Twelve Angry Men focuses on the full realization of each jury as a character, here in Dogville he meticulously created and instilled in us a world full of the personas that constitutes Dogville. Its departure from realism in terms of what we see allowed it to achieve realism in terms of what we feel. But this is where the big contrast between the films comes in. In Twelve Angry Men, we witnessed one by one how each jury changed his vote and how good supposedly triumphed over evil in the end. On the other hand, in Dogville, we saw how each character fall down one at a time, from Chuck (Stellan Skarsgård) to Tom (Paul Bettany), as the inner evil within them emerge and took over the better part of their nature. Once again, von Trier mocks the convention and pretenses of classical Hollywood and the boundary that put limits to its films (as he did in Dancer in the Dark (2000)) as he presented us a cynical yet honest view on society which in effect, mocks us too on how we are as human beings.

I consider this particular scene a very powerful and striking moment within the film. In this scene, the people around, in fact, don’t see what’s happening through the walls, but by essentially removing the walls, von Trier succeeds in highlighting the apathy that exists in Dogville, and furthermore, in our society. It challenges us with the idea that perhaps we don’t see what’s going on around us not because we can’t, but because we choose not to.

The film explores the human nature by “blasting through what was even harder, namely the human soul, right into where it glistered.” Gripping, disturbing, baffling, astonishing and all at the same time entertaining, Dogville raises a lot of philosophical arguments on moral ambiguities that most audience will surely find perplexing and will leave a mark on any thinking man who has seen the film. It’s rich with intellectual content that comes with a fitting style and remarkable performances from the cast and for those reason, I consider this to be one of von Trier’s best works and is definitely a must-see film.

This film works not only because of its honesty in recognizing the existence of evil but because of how it effectively illustrated the aforementioned. Through this "illustration" —the creation of the characters such as Grace (Nicole Kidman) and the people of Dogville, Lars von Trier succeeded in pointing out the exact opposite of what the Hollywood classic films such as Twelve Angry Men had triumphantly demonstrated on the other end.



Rating: 5 out of 5 Kahuna Burgers