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STEVE PERSALLWriter-director Lars von Trier and his superb cast skewer U.S. culture with an allegorical tale of oppression. It's only fantasy. Or is it?
Dogville is a cinematic attack on America's immigrant history launched from abroad, a political allegory so pointed that, in keeping with election times, we expect the creator to step before the camera and announce: "I'm filmmaker Lars von Trier, and I approve this message."
Von Trier has never visited the United States, due to a severe fear of flying. That hasn't stopped him from planning a film trilogy that, judging from the first installment, won't be flattering. That doesn't mean von Trier's impressions don't have elements of truth. The dynamics of Dogville are oblique enough to possibly be considered universal. Or perhaps Dogville isn't solely about immigration at all, but oppression.
By the time the end credits roll, with stark photographs of America's unfortunates and David Bowie's Young Americans playing, no doubt remains that Dogville is a finger wagged in the face of U.S. culture. Unlike the occasional cheap shots of The Barbarian Invasions, von Trier obviously has thought through his rebuttal of the American dream, like a cocktail party dilettante who won't shut up after an inarguable point is acknowledged.
What the filmmaker has done - what he always has done in films such as Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark - is create a film so apart from the norm that viewers will be fascinated, infuriated or both. Some viewers may not stick around long enough to be politically offended, turned off early by the film's bare-bones aesthetic.
Dogville exists entirely on a huge soundstage with only a few pieces of what could be called set design: a bench, one wall of a church, chains and posts marking a walkway through an invisible garden. Houses and streets wide enough for vehicles to travel are labeled by chalk marks on the floor. Even the dog is drawn on the ground, inside a chalked square pen and labeled "dog." It's a conceit borrowed from Our Town, and it's amazing to notice how little the sparse setting matters as the three-hour film progresses. Ideas and performances, highlighted by von Trier (who operated the camera) in tight closeups, are more important than the period detail of a Rocky Mountain town during the Great Depression. Dogville is a film for people who prefer the live stage.
The film is divided into an introductory prologue and nine chapters, each announcing what will occur. The epilogue shows Dogville's sadly ordinary state: 15 adults and a handful of children living hand-to-mouth. Tom Edison (Paul Bettany) is the local dreamer, dissuaded by everyone, including his physician father (Philip Baker Hall). One couple, Clark (Stellan Skarsgard) and Vera (Patricia Clarkson), are tensely married. A reclusive blind man (Ben Gazzara) is too proud to admit his condition. Mrs. Ginger (Lauren Bacall) makes the best gooseberry pie around. John Hurt's narration of these lives is always cheery, in a sinister fashion.
Into the town runs Grace (Nicole Kidman), chased by gangsters and hidden by Tom in an abandoned mine (represented by a few pieces of lumber). Tom thinks Grace may be the jolt Dogville needs. He persuades the citizens to let her stay, but she has two weeks to prove herself needed. The citizens take care of themselves, so she can't contribute much, but she finds a way.
When the people of Dogville learn that Grace is wanted for bank robbery, they use that as leverage. She starts working twice as hard for half as much pay. Friendly faces turn stern and exploitive. Eventually the stakes are raised higher, after Grace is raped and turned into a sex slave for the men. She has nowhere else to go. Even Tom's initial sympathy wanes, and the arrival of Grace's mob pursuer (James Caan) signals the end of allegory and the start of von Trier's revenge fantasy against oppression, a climax as violent as the prologue was peaceful.
What section of America's underbelly Grace represents - or if the entire contraption is hogwash - is left for viewers to decide. Kidman's smoldering performance - her best ever - is a marvelously designed martyr, but there isn't a weakness in the cast. Bettany continues to raise his game, and old pros such as Bacall and Hall still have theirs.
Dogville is the most daring, yet direct, film of 2004, not only in its styling but also in its substance and warning. Like those pealing bells in the clouds in the final shot of Breaking the Waves, von Trier ends Dogville with a sharp break from the fantasy he created to suggest it isn't fantasy at all. Americans can only hope he's wrong, but we're the only ones who can do anything about it.
DogvilleGrade: A
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Paul Bettany, Stellan Skarsgard, Lauren Bacall, Blair Brown, Patricia Clarkson, James Caan, Philip Baker Hall, Jeremy Davies, Ben Gazzara, voice of John Hurt
Screenplay: Lars von Trier
Rating; R; sexual situations, violence, profanity
Running time: 177 min.