Directed by Lars von Trier
Released in 2000
There is a moment in Lars
von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark when the
sadness becomes just too much to bear. It is not one particular scene; there
are a good half dozen that push the infirm Selma (Björk) into unwinnable
scenarios, each worse than the one preceding. Different viewers will reach
different moments and break in different ways. Some will sob, in full faith of the
film’s melodrama, while others will fume and swear and call the whole thing trash.
For me, director and writer von Trier pushed too far about 15 minutes from the
end, when he crossed some unacknowledged threshold of mine where tragedy twists
into sadism and emotion into forgery. I was fully aware the flickering frames
were nothing more than an artificial creation aimed at extorting maximum misery
from its viewer. Up to that point, however, Dancer
in the Dark balanced its pain with its pathos and caught me under its
experimental spell.
This 2000 film is set in Washington State in 1964, though
von Trier does not take great lengths to transform his native Denmark and
Sweden into an American period setting. With digital video cinematography, the
aesthetic looks rather timeless, in a grainy, neorealist kind of way. Selma’s primary
struggle —coping with illness in poverty — is timeless by itself, so she also faces
more severe mid-century injustices, like misogyny and the Red Scare, although
on little more than a cursory level. As it stands, Selma, a Czech immigrant,
works a monotonous job in a metal processing factory, saving her minimal wages
in a tin container for her son’s optic surgery. He suffers from the same
hereditary disease that is turning her blind. Even with her magnifying glass
spectacles, she can barely see a thing, yet she insists on walking home every
night, shuffling between the railroad tracks that pass by her trailer home.
Selma escapes through music. The factory’s metronomic
clangs or tonal hisses entrance her into song, which, in turn, propels the film
into full stop musical numbers. Von Trier brightens the washed-out colors and
cuts furiously between dozens of cameras for the five songs, which, while
confined to Selma’s mind, progress the story by reflecting on what has happened
or is soon to take place. The choreography and effort put into the music’s
production is as sincere as anything Gene Kelly or Stanley Donen tackled in the
1950s. Of course, von Trier adds his depraved touch, like when he reanimates a
corpse for a ballad or directs his characters to frolic about death row. Von Trier’s
unorthodox staging matches Björk’s alien voice, which freely climbs and falls
octaves as “industrial” rhythms loop in the background. Dancer in the Dark reaches beauty when it resorts to music; considering
the first song enters nearly 40 minutes in, perhaps it should have included
more of it.
A multitude of familiar character actors join Björk, who
swore off acting after this draining experience. David Morse (The Green Mile) plays an anemic police
officer who provides Selma and her son a place to live, and Cara Seymour (American Psycho) serves as his witless
wife. Peter Stormare (Fargo) once
again plays a dim simpleton, here pining over Selma and seducing her with car
rides after work, which she politely refuses. Swedish star Stellan Skarsgard (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), Zeljko
Ivanek (Damages) and Siobhan Fallon (Men in Black) fill in smaller roles that
remain potent, especially in Fallon’s case. Catherine Deneuve (Belle de Jour) nails an unexpected lead
as Selma’s closest confidant and mother figure, Kathy, clocking in the second-most
screen time in the process. One of the cinema’s few canonical beauties, Deneuve
wears minimal makeup in an unglamorous performance that relies on a lot of
stricken reaction shots as she watches misfortune ruin her dear friend.
And there is plenty of misfortune. Independent cinema
prides itself with probing the depths of human nature — John Cassavettes
started the anti-industry with his rough domestic drama A Woman Under the Influence. So, not only is Lars von Trier excused
to provoke, it’s his job. He mostly eschews shot reverse shot, instead panning
back and forth or zooming in with a handheld camera as characters pour out
their hearts to one another. I bought it all, including the central, agonizing
scene of betrayal, perhaps because Björk seemed as shocked as her character
Selma. It is after this point when, not only does the magic dissipate — that is
clearly the point — but the passion devolves into artifice. There is no
apparent self-referential commentary that von Trier wants to impart by calling
to attention the deceit of his medium (they’re actors!), and the social backgrounds
of his characters are so shallow that the Brechtian technique of gestus — “character action typical
of a class” — seems an invalid excuse.
“In a musical, nothing dreadful ever happens,” Selma
muses, with a smile. It is von Trier’s simple-minded goal to defy that thesis.
Some will be able to weep in acceptance of his vision. Some will seek to burn
the man in effigy. I am thankful for much of the film’s beauty, as embodied
aboard a slow-moving train during the Oscar-nominated song “I’ve Seen it All.” Dancer in the Dark sees music as a
buffer from life’s ills and the common force between all mankind. It’s the
hackneyed case that mankind is callous and evil that I could have done without.
Final Verdict:
3 Stars Out of 5
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