Mixed Feelings About Dogville....
Lest you think that I only went to some teenpic this weekend, I also went to Lars Von Trier's newest audiovisual experiment,
Dogville. Normally, I would post something this short under
Joker's earlier review, but it is so far down the page, I decided to open a new thread. I can certainly see the appeal of the film (as opposed to Todd McCarthy, I think that sometimes a big "fuck you" to America is in order), and I thought Joker's enumeration of the "Grace as Immigrant" and "Grace as Christ" themes sharpened my appreciation for the film. Still, I have mixed feelings about
Dogville. Over the course of the film's three hours, I was all over the map, from one extreme to another, when it came to my reactions towards what was transpiring on screen. I think this has a lot to do with Von Trier's desire to be a button-pushing provocateur. At times I scoffed as the over the top outrageousness and ridiculousness of what was going on, fully supporting Yun-fat’s assertion that Von Trier was lapsing into self-parody (whether intentional or not), while at other times the cruelty, exploitation, and debasement inflicted upon Grace (Nicole Kidman turns in a rather good performance, and I especially liked her transformation at the end) was like a sucker punch to the gut. And then, sometimes I was just restless and bored, though the film was consistently watchable. By the end of the film, I was just angry, especially at the weasely Tom Jr., and I wanted to exterminate the population of Dogville myself. Is that so wrong?
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