Rating: 4/5
Anti-Criterion Challenge 2024 | 24/52 | evilbjork’s Avant-Garde Underground
These are wicked times... Soon there'll be folks by with even less than us.
In the style of a 19th-century novel, a narrator introduces us to the meager town of Dogville, in which folks have little and only ask that what is good be shared.
Tom Edison organizes town meetings that few desire to attend. He believes the township is poor at receiving, but cannot envision a gift they could receive.
He hears gunshots off in the distance. Then, a stranger wanders into town, a woman horrified and looking to get away. Tom hides her in the mines as men come looking for her. Her name is Grace.
The film is a long observation of how Dogville will receive this gift. As the pressure increases to turn Grace over, the cost of her staying grows in unforeseen ways.
On the black box stage, the film depicts the town outlined in white on the floor. Some props and set dressings occupy the stage with the actors, but for the most part, the filmmakers have inscribed the name of an object, building, or road where it would be. The compositions become digital when shot from above, comping in characters and set pieces necessary to the shot.
Sound effects and score accompany the film — for example, though there is no door, an actor may pantomime opening and closing it, and the sounds of an opening and shutting door follow the gestures.
The camera work is customary of Von Trier, with artificial shake and zooms. The color grading has a sepia quality, giving it the sense of “old-timiness” or destitution. But the minimal staging can only hint at it — we must fill in the stereotypes with our imagination.
What makes this movie worth watching are the performances. The actors give us characters that believe in the world they occupy, and that is what we need to care about any of the surrounding details (or lack thereof). As characters, they’re more archetypes than people, but it functions for the film’s somewhat allegorical nature.
The film explores morality, punishment vs. exploitation, and how labor can be indistinguishable from either. The people of Dogville have learned the lessons of capitalism, taking the gift of labor and squeezing it for extra. When someone’s life depends on your benevolence, should it surprise you when it turns into debt? Scale that out, and you have the poor and lower class. At every stage, the view skews downward.
What is the cost of honesty? To survive is in some ways to lie to yourself because you need that idea of yourself and others to make the concept of tomorrow tolerable.
This film requires getting to the end (like the credits) to assess — it will reward patience if you have it.