Manderlay
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Movie Reviews of Manderlay
Movie Review: Exit Stage Left
Summary: 4 Stars
This film/stage production requires that you bring all your senses and sensibilities to the showing. Watch it carefully, think it over for a week and then watch it very carefully again. Are the violence and sex scenes pure political posturing or to drive home the obvious? Does the production have something original to say? I don't think it does. However, if you think you will be challenged and you won't be unchanged by the experience.Movie Review: Would you agree.... ?
Summary: 3 Stars
Beginning last night, and passing into this day, I watched "Dogville" and its' sequel, "Manderlay." I was hoping for something along the lines of Claude Berri's "Germinal" by way of John Sayles' "Matewan."
Given:
1. that "Dogville" suffers terribly from its' slow pace,
2. that any sense of continuity between the two films suffers terribly from the loss of Kidman (replaced by a very limited Bryce Dallas Howard) and Caan (who was replaced by Willem Dafoe).
2. Von Trier's (and his teams') obvious ability as a director, as evinced by the power of their "Breaking the Waves," and other films ...
... Would you agree ...
3. That Von Trier's treatment of his socio-politcal themes (forgiveness and compassion have limits, ultimately power, even dignity, comes from the barrel of a gun, the unexpected outcomes of attempts at social engineering abroad) are pointed, Bergman-bleak and have some validity as critiques of American's bungling and costly efforts to influence events abroad?
4. That it's a goddamn shame Von Trier hadn't decided to drop his theatrical conceit (of adapting the modernist staging of Thorton Wilder's "Our Town") and chosen to shoot these scripts more naturalistically (like Terrance Malick's "Days of Heaven") ? The theatricality of the staging limited the effectiveness of the storytelling medium in both films. These scripts are solid agitprop, and would've made for some solid, if didactic, even operatic, visceral filmmaking. They would have made Von Trier the next Costa-Gravis.
6. That - as it stands - we'll likely never see the third part of the trilogy realized on film?
7. And finally, that I can be a terribly pretentious sod?
Movie Review: Not as good as "Dogville"...
Summary: 3 Stars
Man, I was so disappointed in this film. "Dogville" is one of the most powerful and moving experiences that I have ever had in a theatre before, and they had to follow it up with this, "Manderlay", starring Bryce Dallas Howard as Grace, who was originally played to perfection by Nicole Kidman. Bryce Dallas, while I loved her in "The Village", doesn't seem to know what to do with this role. She seems lost, and she's the main character, and everything rests on her performace.
As with "Dogville", von Treir has taken the minimalist approach again, and we have the sporadically decorated, but otherwise bare, soundstage where all of the action takes place. It worked in the first installment of this supposed "trilogy", but here it all looks cramped and thrown together. The acting is sub-par, the narration is long winded, and could be considered slightly offensive to some, and it is just lacking in every way. Don't get me wrong, there are some powerful moments here. However, there is just nothing to ponder after the credits have rolled. It's like sitting through a big, long sermon with a pastor who doesn't know the source material that well. Eventually, you just find yourself tuning it out...
Recommended with reservations...
Movie Review: Politically confused, but intellectually stimulating film
Summary: 3 Stars
The third effort by Lars Von Trier to explore the dark underbelly of America (after Dancer in the Dark and Dogville; a fourth effort is reportedly in the making) is politically confused, quite ludicrous, and it sometimes veer into very dangerous territory for a "progressive" intellectual like Von Trier. Yet, it is nevertheless a well performed and very intellectually stimulating movie. Deliberately stagy, Dogville is set in 1933, where slavery persists (!) in a farm called Manderlay in Alabama. After finding about Manderlay, our heroine Grace (Dallas Bryce Howard, the daughter of Ron Howard, in a very risky role) decides to stay in Manderlay for a few months in order to give notions of democracy to the slaves and to the white masters. Unfortunately, things go wrong because the blacks have been conditioned to servitude and the whites intend to keep them that way. The movie at times endorses a crude Stalinist view of America, and at other times reach the seeming (and astonishing) conclusion that African Americans are unable to govern themselves. Yet for all its flaws and contradictions, this is very much a movie that deserves to bee seen by those with an open mind.Movie Review: Art Cinema Justified
Summary: 3 Stars
It's amazing that Lars von Trier in his America triology actually have been able to rejuvenate/reinvent the movie language. In this movie we actually see images never seen before in history. In my opinion Lars von Trier's strength lies in the technique of movie making. I am not very impressed by his stories and direction. In that respect he seems ignorant and immature. But in the field of the image he is excellent. Still I really hope that he will one day go to Hollywood!