Manderlay
by Lars von Trier
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bryce Dallas Howard, Danny Glover, Isaach De Bankolé, Michaël Abiteboul, Willem DafoeDirector: Lars von Trier
Brand: Genius
Writer: Lars von Trier
Producer: Andreas Schreitmüller
Producer: Bettina Brokemper
Producer: Els Vandevorst
Producer: Gillian Berrie
Producer: Gunnar Carlsson
Producer: Humbert Balsan
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Color, Digital Sound, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 139 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-08-08
Audience Rating: Unrated
Model: 79509
Studio: Ifc
Product features:
- Liberation. Whether They Want It Or Not. From the director of Dancer In The Dark and Dogville comes Manderlay, a moving and hard-hitting story about emancipation from slavery. Traveling across America with her father (Willem Dafoe), Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) comes to discover the isolated plantation of Manderlay-a place whose inhabitants do not know that slavery has been abolished. Outraged t
Movie Reviews of Manderlay
Movie Review: LvT: "I'm suspicious of a system that allows for so many losers."
Summary: 5 Stars
Phenomenal: von Trier rubs shoulders with Aeschylus and William Faulkner
Manderlay consists of 8 'chapters'.
It is part of a trilogy entitled 'USA: A Land of Opportunity'.
It is set 70 years after the Southern War of Secession.
It is filmed on a sound stage: there is something successfully Brechtian realized here; the dream of epic theater and de-oxymoronfication of the phrase Modern Tragedy.
To the charge of the film's 'racism': Bjork, after filming Dancer in the Dark, called von Trier "an emotional terrorist'. Taking this comment meta-politically, Lars von Trier is hardly 'conservative'. In any sense. In any sense /whatsoever/. In fact, if the powers-that-be ('conservative' and 'liberal')were better attuned to this -and praise to the Lord that they are miserable philistines one and all- Manderlay would have been demonized and banned forthwith. Satires of 'Birth of a Nation' are not your typical movie-goer fare, but the ill-perceived 'racist' element in the film cannot be imputed to its Author: he is well beyond and above /just/ that, --creative sovereignty demands such independence from such vulgarities.
"Is this movie depressive, being so tragic?"
--Not at all. The other component of tragedy is the Satyr Play. Humor is ingeniously employed, with great intelligence by von Trier. You will walk away from this film laughing. Bitter, vicious irony has to find an outlet from resentment, and this is provided; oh so generously provided! (You'll just have to see the film;)
[first lines]
Narrator: It was in the year of 1933, when Grace and her father were heading southward with their army of gangsters.
Events:
Gangsters relocate from somewhere in Texas after a business sojourn which leaves them unwelcome upon their return: they end up outside the Manderlay plantation in Alabama, where a black is about to be lashed for an offense. The daughter of the gang boss is asked by a female plantation hand to help.
They become involved. The Daughter invokes an oath made by her Father on her mother's deathbed. The business is divided equally: the Daughter receives half the manpower and oversees the 'emancipation' of the Manderlay slave hands.
The Mistress of the plantation dies shortly after their arrival and intervention. The Daughter has the Lawyer draw up a contract/covenant. The four Whites of the Mistress' kin are obliged to serve as farm hands with the former slaves for the duration of one planting-harvest cycle, whence the profit from the cotton is to be distributed and both they --and the blacks-- are released from further obligation to remain.
What follows cannot be discussed in-review, the dimensions of tragedy and intensely suggestive political suggestion (if not '/reaction/' ;) Lars Von Trier has created on 35mm is totally out of the scope of 21st century humanity's expectations and rationalizations, its desperate and compulsive meting-out-of and assignment-of meaning. The material gives solid grounding for so many interpretations and meditations that outlining the salient ones can only serve to blind the potential viewer to certain nuances and boundary-blendings that would be better perceived (and appreciated) by a naive pre-viewer understanding and perspective.
What I can say is that the Father-Gangster Boss, the Card Sharp, and The 'Proud N---er' deserve especial attention while watching this film.
[last lines]
Narrator: America had proffered its hand, discreetly perhaps, if anybody refused to see a helping hand he really only had himself to blame.
Further extensive reviews available at imdb:
[...]
In closing, a well formed insight from a reviewer found there:
"Grace's color is extremely significant. Resonances with Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust and Absalom, Absalom can also be found in the simplicity of the white liberal Northerner's analysis and solution to race problems. In this sense, Von Trier's provocative film is perhaps above all else an indictment of American liberalism (or liberal individualism), domestically and globally. All of these aspects should be considered through the lens of his Brechtian alienation techniques. Otherwise, this turns out to be one of the most ignominiously racist films since Birth of a Nation."
I would only add that the term 'American liberalism' as used above can be pruned for a more specific, descriptive meaning:
What is meant, is the gun-diplomacy of Yanqui Liberalism. Or "Yankee", if you prefer the less colorful alternative to that appropriately loaded southern-latin construction. Not that Antebellum resentments and institutions are not given their properly due damnation by v. Trier as well, but praise where praise is due: Yanquilandia, not America per se, is where he sets his axe on this root of evil. And quite rightly so.
Summary of Manderlay
Traveling across America with her father (Willem Dafoe), Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) comes to discover the isolated plantation of Manderlay ? a place whose inhabitants do not know that slavery has been abolished. Outraged to discover that the plantationsSimilar DVD Movies
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