Dogville is a love-it or hate-it howler. I hate it, yet I'm fascinated by the magnitude of the ambition and the failure to realize it.
As written and directed by Danish maverick Lars von Trier, Dogville is an otherwise obscure experimental film with a startling big-name cast led by Nicole Kidman. Other key players include Lauren Bacall, James Caan, Paul Bettany, Ben Gazzara, Patricia Clarkson, Jean-Marc Barr, Harriet Andersson and John Hurt as the narrator.
Even though the story is set in a remote Colorado mountain town, the film was shot entirely on a nearly barren stage housed in a film studio in Sweden.
The set is not just rustic, it is demanding. We must suspend our disbelief despite all we see, or don't see. The main street -- Elm St., home of nightmares -- is created through chalk lines on the floor. Houses are fragmented pieces of construction and completed by more chalk lines. Even a dog is a drawn outline and, although we hear him bark, he does not come to life until the cataclysmic end of the film.
Actors mime opening doors and respect imagined physical barriers. Their chores and daily activities are suggested, not shown. In live theatre, of course, these conventions are commonplace. In a film, they thrust the passive viewer into a quandary: Distance yourself or adopt the conceit?
Initially, in the first hour or so of this marathon, it is enticing. The mad Dane has somehow, without ever visiting America, created an eccentric version of Americana in the manner of Thornton Wilder's famous stage play, Our Town.
We see how Kidman, playing a mysterious stranger on the run from the Mob, insinuates herself into the fabric of the town. She finds safe harbour, sparks new friendships, diverts other people from their problems, unites the townspeople in a common cause. She is a heroine, we think.
The film, written and directed by the exacting von Trier as the first in a trilogy, then moves towards its true intention: It is a psychological thriller that shows how ugly and mean people really are. As the mood of the town slowly turns grim, even desperate, Kidman is turned into a virtual slave. Locked in real chains, she is serial raped by the husbands and paradoxically shunned by the women for stealing their men. As a performer, Kidman is either pathetic in the role, or the role is pathetic, or both.
This sicko scenario eventually -- and it does seem to take forever -- ends in a predictable orgy of violence.
When this film made its debut at the 2003 Cannes film festival some Americans recoiled in horror because they felt von Trier was being anti-American. That is a tiresome argument born out of American paranoia about their place in the world. Instead, Dogville just seems misanthropic. Von Trier seems to hate everybody. Most of his films explore this distrust, this angst he generates as he engages the world.
Fear and loathing make his best films (such as Europa, Europa, or Zenotropa as it was known in the U.S.) even greater and it makes his worst films (Dogville among them) so intolerable. Never boring, however. Even in failure, a von Trier movie is compelling enough to watch to the bitter end.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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