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DogvilleRating:
Release Date: 24 August, 2004 Retail Price: $19.98 OUR Price: $17.99 You SAVE: $1.99! Cast: |
Dogville Reviews
You can talk about immorality without actually being immoral.
I enjoyed the portion of this movie that I allowed myself to see. The portion I saw was charming and intriguing. I had to stop though when the woman was raped. Why do I have to watch a woman get raped? You can talk about rape, and do things that tell your audience that a woman was raped, without actually showing the sex. BTW, kids, on set, were watching that man and that woman have sex as well. What kind of people are you?
The difference between art and reality is that art is pretend and reality is real. When you force your audience to see sin though, your art passes through that barrier that exists between art and reality. You are no longer just talking about immorality, you are actually being immoral and bringing your audience down into it as well. I can see how this would be a pretty exciting prospect for some directors...but I'm just not interested.
Hey...how about this? If you're really into that idea, breaking the barrier between art and reality, turning your audience into a bunch of sinners, then why don't you just hire a bunch of punks to beat up old women as they wait for a bus? If you do it live, and then also show the number for the police station closest to the incident on screen, then everyone, as they sit there and watch can choose for themselves whether or not they will be good citizens and call in, or be bad citizens and just keeping watching.
If you're going to tell a story, then tell a story. If it's your intention though to permanently darken my life...and you did...I sure do wish you wouldn't. You're hurting people...and not in good ways. I wish you would stop.
The Darkest Most Primal Side of Human Nature
Dogville is the type of depressingly disturbing film that will leave an impression on the viewer whether they love or hate it. This very worthy and very long piece of 'parable' which explores the darkest and most primal side of human nature, and a side which potentionally lurks within all of us, would obviously work equally well in the theatre. The Brechtian alienation techniques clearly apparent in the floor marked rehearsal 'style' set, deliberatley underplayed performances and fairytale style narration. But this story is anything but a fairytale, infact the total antitheses. Set in a small isolated American town during the depression, 'Dogville', or at least elements of it, could of course exist anywhere (hence the undetailed and unrealistic set). The film pulls no punches in its grittingly bleak representation of human beings at their worst in desperate times. A small seemingly simple and welcoming community who reveal their true colours as they gradually begin to turn on the weaker member of the herd, the vulnerable outsider, like a flock of relentless vultures who have smelled the blood. Grace's(supposed) passive co-operativeness and'niceness' is rewarded at first but then becomes an easy target for exploitation and hideous abuse, as the villagers take advantage of her needy dilema.
The film asks many moral and hypothetical questions in its allegory, and then finally answers them in the most unexpectedly shocking and brutal way at the film's climax, prompting the audience then to ask yet more questions. This is a deeply provoking and intellectual film, those looking for a relaxing night of popcorn and entertainment should give this one a miss. It's heavy chewing for the mind and blatantly confronting and hardhitting in its content.
The strength of the movie is in the story and universal themes and questions it raises. This is my opinion, is not an 'actors' film. It's a writer/directors piece that could be played by no-bodies and probably would have more impact if it was, though not the commercial recognition. I didn't find Nicole Kidman's performance anything outstanding frankly, to me she seemed to be acting half asleep throughout the movie as if she was tranquillized. But in all honesty none of the actors performances stand out in my mind. Although they were certainly all equally worthy and more than adequate, the controversial nature of the story is what holds your attention, providing enough intellectual debate for a university theses, and that more than likely, is director Lars Von Triers intention.
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