Dogville
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Movie Reviews of Dogville
Movie Review: WOW!
Summary: 5 Stars
What a movie! Just bought it on DVD after having downloaded it and watched it on my PC a couple of times (Something I very often do before buying music or films, if it's bad, I won't buy it, if it's really good; I will) I love this movie, the story is brilliant, and the TV-theatre/theatre way it was shot helps the story, if you see something, it means something. The movie might be taken different in the USA, than in Denmark, or better: Scandinavia. It's a view from Denmark and Scandinavia of the USA that you see here, not an american view, not a european view, but a danish/scandinavian view of the USA. Lars von Trier offers the way the USA looks from over in Denmark and Scandinavia, something many americans might oppose, but that's the way people in Scandinavia see the USA through TV, books, films, and media. If it was vice versa scandinavians might've been puzzled or angry too, only difference is that 1/6 of the content in a daily newspaper in the US isn't about scandinavian afairs, and 80% of what's on TV isn't made in Scandinavia. But anyways, I think this movie should enjoyable for everyone above 15 years of age who are looking for a thoughtful, expressive, and yet very straight forward movie. I love this movie!Movie Review: I hate the movie. It's an excellent movie.
Summary: 5 Stars
I hated this movie. I almost walked out of the theater early. I wanted to stick a fork in my eye after the movie was done so that I could make sure I was still alive. The move reeks of pretentious European intellectualism. The movie is a ridiculous conceit of minmialism meshed with Brechtian theory about theater. The director is Anti-American, only slightly less rabidly so than the freakshows in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
However, the movie is quite original in its execution. Whatever one thinks of the minimalist style, and whatever one thinks of Brecht's work, it is an interesting approach to use in film, and one which I have never seen before. Since so few films these days are able to create new methods of telling a story, the film deserves the accolades it has received.
It does, however, reek of aesthete pretentiousness and is best avoided by those who are either not interested in pretentious art-house cinema or who can't appreciate the movie solely based on its fresh approach to telling a story.
Those who will appreciate the movie the most are the intellectual sophisticates and post-modernists who idolize Derrida et al.
Movie Review: brutal and brilliant allegory on being human
Summary: 5 Stars
i first saw this film long after it's release. a bit wary as I am not a devoted fan of von trier but i much admire a lot of his work and appreicate his efforts. i have to say, i really don't get the anti american stand. he may be pointing to hypocrisies in american culture: social and political at the end with the montage but i really saw the montage as a portrait of humanity in all its forms and did not, despite the Bowie song, limit the faces to America. What exactly does it mean to be human? What are our responsibilites to ourselves and to others? I think Dogville was about each of us, about humanity at various moments along the way. And, as Kidman says in the end, they did the best they could under very difficult circumstances. Just like we all do, even though our best may not be "good" enough and we have in fact behaved badly, very badly sometimes. The film is rich with so many disturbing and beautiful and frightening and sad and complicated facets of humanity, of myself, I was suspended and made breathless and trembling by the end. Once in a blue moon are you touched so completely by a film. Dogville touched me, shoved me and kicked me. Brilliant.Movie Review: Reaping the wind...
Summary: 5 Stars
Dogville works on many levels, but I suggest that it is primarily an allegory of almost Biblical proportions.
This is mainly confirmed near the end, when the true power dynamic is revealed and the apocalyptic ending unfolds in dramatic fashion.
There are many sub-themes on the journey to the Apocalypse, including slavery, witch hunts, racism and the suppression/exploitation of women, but for me, the greatest commentary is the way it plays out an almost Christian hybrid of Old/New Testament values.
When we discover Grace's relationship to the unknown man in the limo, there is almost a suggestion that she was 'sent' into Dogville, the way Jesus Christ was sent to Earth in order to teach by example and transform people's lives and thinking, only to be ultimately persecuted and betrayed.
The stark, Old Testament 'payback' ending will shock some viewers and be uplifting to others, depending on whom you identify with during the story unfoldment.
It is a long and at times slow movie, but if you can work with the deliberately minimalist theater-like sets, it is well worth your time.
Movie Review: Refreshingly Uncinematic
Summary: 5 Stars
I really admire love it or hate it movies. These projects may be just God-awful to some people, but I admire the bravado these films have in taking real risks where Hollywood is content to follow the Xerox copy formula.
Dogville represents a very theatrical point-of-view. Its style seems more at home on Masterpiece Theatre then the silver screen. This is what makes it all the more engaging to me. The stripped-bare quality lets you really become involved with the characters and the situation. If a real town would have been there, it would only serve to distract you from what von Trier knew all too well: a town is only the people who make it up. By removing the town walls, the characters are open to us at all times. Likewise, the barries they put to their souls are removed as well.
I didn't find Dogville to be really anti-American. Instead I found a universal message which is unsettling as it is true. "It's very easy for ordinary people to justify being horrific to other human beings."
Dogville is not for anyone who feels they have to be pulled into a movie. It is very much for the people who engage themselves.