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Author
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Topic: Dogville
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Brad Haven
Master Film Handler
Posts: 300
From: fremantle, West Australia
Registered: Aug 2001
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posted 12-29-2003 11:04 PM
Not his best film, but a film not to be missed.
The release version is shorter than the festival version, it's been a couple on months since i saw it, but i'm sure this version is about 140mins, the festival version being closer to 3 hours.
Nicole kidman does a fine job, but it was the cast as a whole that made the film work and to take the focus away from kidman. i could imagine alot of people taking a punt on this film because of kidman, i think these people will be disappointed, THIS IS A LARS VON TRIER FILM, if you like what he does or like confronting films? this is the film for you!
This is strangely his most accessible film to date, as it is very stripped back to the essentials allowing you focus more easily on the story.
Lars von trier is losing his touch, he's increasingly more interested in doing what he's told not to do, rather than creating interesting and compelling art.
Dogville opened on boxing day and has been received very well with good box office figures.
I LOVE LARS!!
p.s. still busy rebuilding our cinema (LUNA ON SX), been taking heaps of before,during and after pics, two cinemas open so far and the other two open in a few weeks.
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 04-11-2004 09:16 PM
I just saw Dogville at the Kew Gardens Cinema, Screen 3. The show with trailers ran three hours.
My reaction to the stage method was like Ian's. Just like Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," with a narrator's voice like the Stage Manager. I thought, "Oh crap--I came here to see a film, not a play." But I got suckered into the story, which had parallels to Voltair's Candide , and de Sade's Justine --no good deed going unpunished, and no innocent left uncorrupted. Just like 18th C. porno fantasies.
I found the story painful to watch, and was relieved to visit the mens' room in the middle, something I never do at the cinema.
As in William Soroyan's "The Petrified Forest," the 1930's gangsters are always just over the horizon, until the end, when it became evident the director must have seen "Scarface" and "Bonnie & Clyde."
I first thought this film was a serious treatment of philosophical themes, such as the nature of the individual's relationship with society, and the altruism or selfishness of our motives and actions. But the perverseness and cynicism seemed used for "entertainment" values. Snickers from a few audience members seemed to indicate they may have appreciated the comedy--count me out.
The end credits were a mishmash of archival 1930's Great Depression photographs by Dorothea Lange and others of the WPA Photographic program, Harlem poverty photos, a full-screen Nixon face and similar unrelated photos, cheapened by their inclusion as title background. An eclectic musical mix added to this gave me the impression that the director tossed all his background research materials into this stupid way to end the film. I lost all respect for the director and the film at that point.
The film has a fine cast, including Nicole Kidman, Paul Bettany, and Lauren Bacall. Production credits include Swedish, Norwegian and Danish names. Some seem to think the film was an anti-US jibe at American lifestyles, but I don't take that idea seriously. I think it rather used Hollywood film cliches in an attempt to simulate an "American" genre and locale.
Considering the length of the film, I was annoyed that, after sitting through the banal slide show, there were two filmed commercials (one for a cell phone!) plus about four trailers (badly keystoned.) The Scope feature was clean and well presented.
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MORNING AFTER (POST-NAUSEA) EDIT:
The most obvious allegory seems to be a satire of the Christian ethic of responding to hate with love, and to cruelty with good deeds. Cervantes and Voltaire and others have treated this theme. "Our Town," a welcoming community, becomes dog-eat-dog Dogsville.
I thought also of our refugee immigrants, often undocumented, who are welcomed for their hard work but too often end up exploited, abused, and enslaved. Such treatment can produce the desire to revolt. Internationally, a possible cause of terrorist psychology.
But my wife floored me with the knowledge that Nicole Kidman had been married to Tom Cruise, bore him children, only to have him abandon her for Penelope Cruz, with whom he shacked up in a mountain cabin. Nicole went into a severe depression, until her father came and took her back home to Australia.
Perhaps Ms Kidman had her revenge making the film, whose male writer character is named Tom. ["Thomas Edison Junior,"
decadent satirical parallel to the famous inventor.]
[ 04-13-2004, 06:18 PM: Message edited by: Gerard S. Cohen ]
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