Dogville (2003)

As I've said the other day, my resolution for 2019 is to watch all those movies I've been meaning to watch since always but kept putting off for a reason or another. Dogville I put off because of the length and because, being honest, you have to be in the right mood to handle Lars von Trier. 

The film focuses on Grace Margaret Mulligan (Nicole Kidman), a beautiful young woman on the run from the mob who seeks refuge in Dogville, a small mountain town with a tight community of people who look after each other. The residents are reluctant at first, but, persuaded by the town’s philosopher, Tom Edison Jr. (Paul Bettany), they agree to hide her. In return, Grace agrees to work for them but nothing comes without a price and soon the people of Dogville begin to abuse her.

It’s a very simple story that appears calm, harmless, almost boring at the beginning, but, little by little, if you have the patience to stick around, the plot begins to develop and it slowly turns into a cruel, often unbearable story —I should have seen it coming as to shock the audience is typical of von Trier but the dramatic turn the story took really caught me by surprise— with a brilliant, astonishing twist at the end that will take your breath away.

It is a story rich with themes of arrogance, indifference, hypocrisy, greed, desire, mistrust, punishment, death and love. It is a story about power, corruption and corruptibility —power corrupts and the more the power the greater the corruption, is the film’s statement—; it is about human nature and morality, a portrait of America, but also of the entire world. In other words, Dogville contains misanthropy towards all humans.

The characters aren’t particularly three-dimensional people and don’t have much personality as they all are symbols that represent the dark side of humanity, but the time von Trier takes to set them up allows them to be entirely credible. The town of Dogville can also be considered a character as it is its small area that really helps to convey the hostility between the human characters.

The cast does a wonderful job —Nicole Kidman is magnificent as Grace; she brings so much vulnerability and fragility to her young, naïve character. Great support is provided by the supporting cast, Paul Bettany and Patricia Clarkson delivering the most powerful performances of the bunch. John Hurt does a marvellous job narrating as the narration is amusing and very moving.

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What stuck with me the most about Dogville is the style. The film is void of any visual constituents of a film; it is indeed set on a theatre stage with almost no props. There are no buildings, no plants, no animals, only drawings on the floor. It has no backgrounds —it’s black or white depending on the time of the day. The characters open and close invisible doors, they talk about non-existent objects. This is what truly made Dogville work for me. The very minimalistic stage magnifies the town’s residents’ interactions with Grace, they make their emotions more palpable as it allows the camera to linger on the actors’ faces without any distraction whatsoever. It’s the style that allowed me to fully immerse into the story, to experience everything event as if I was part of the story.

Ultimately, Dogville is a very long film —a nearly three hours—, and it’s often difficult to watch but it’s worth the effort/time as it is one of the most brilliant and unique films I’ve seen. 

The House That Jack Built (2018)

I have been looking forward to seeing The House That Jack Built for quite some time, and I was even more interested in seeing it when many people walked out of it at Cannes. Lars von Trier is a provocateur after all, so if one of his movies gets that kind of reaction, it means that he succeeded.  

The House That Jack Built follows the story of Jack (Matt Dillon), a highly intelligent serial killer, over the course of twelve years and depicts the gruesome murders he committed that developed his inner madman.

I’d love to tell you more about it but the lack of a plot really makes it difficult for me to do that. The House That Jack Built is in fact some sort of collection of stories, murders stories, that are told by the serial killer himself and that lead to what’s probably the most disappointing ending of the year as it transforms an unevenly compelling drama into a ridiculous supernatural fantasy and made me feel like I wasted two and a half hours of my life —actually, it was more since I took many breaks in between because the film was unbearable. And by that, I mean boring, mostly because of its tedious dialogue and monologues. 

The characters are quite a disappointment too. Jack is the “hero” of the story and yet it feels like he’s a supporting character in someone else’s story because of how underdeveloped he is. For a film about and narrated by a serial killer, I was expecting to get to know the character way better than this. I mean, who is Jack? Why is he the way he is? What did trigger him the first time? We just get to know his victims. Well, know is a big word as the rest of the characters somehow manage to be even thinner than Jack. Not to mention how illogical and ridiculous their reactions are. I get the cop that just doesn’t care when Simple tells him about Jack, or that nobody cares when Simple is screaming for help as it is an accurate portrait of the society we live in, but the victims just act plain stupid.

Despite the lazy writing, Matt Dillon gives an incredibly compelling performance as Jack —perhaps the best of his career— and knows exactly how to handle the odd, dark humour. His excellent performance is the only reason I kept watching till the end. Uma Thurman who unfortunately dies in the first act also gives a strong performance as the woman with the broken jack/victim number 1.

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No matter how lazy the writing is, the worst aspect of The House That Jack Built is the direction. As always, von Trier placed in the film some quite graphic scenes whose only purpose is to shock the audience. My problem with that is that they just weren't that shocking. Yes, some of the things Jack does and are shown to us are nasty, but they just don't feel brutal, nor shocking. They are cold. Just like the entire movie. Also, the shaky camera gets quite annoying after a while. The music, on the other hand, fits the film pretty well. 

Antichrist (2009)

I've been meaning to watch more Lars von Trier films ever since I watched and loved Nymphomaniac. But he is not the easiest director to watch, so I kept putting them off until now, as I decided to watch horror movies for 31 days straight and I picked Antichrist. 

The movie tells the story of a couple who has just lost their child. After the funeral, She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) falls into the depression hole and He (Willem Dafoe), a therapist), tries to help her by figuring out what her fear is.  To do this, they head off to their cabin in the woods. Once there, however, her mental state rapidly deteriorates. 

The story, which is divided into six chapters --a Prologue, Grief, Pain, Despair, The Three Beggars, and an Epilogue--, gets more and more intense and disturbing as it develops to the point of becoming unbearable. 

Antichrist's is a story that explores the human process of coping with trauma and loss; it portrays the human nature and condition, specifically the feminine condition. And this is where I had a huge problem with von Trier's movie. Women are portrayed as evil, the incarnation of the devil. I agree that we often forget that, just like men, women too are capable of doing horrific things --just think of mothers killing their own kids-- but this feels like a movie made by someone and for people who hate and fear women.

At least the characters, which are only two, He and She, are pretty solid. Although they seem unrealistic and little believable and their actions are often bizarre, they are interesting and have such an emotional depth that they effortlessly carry the film. The performances from Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg are both very compelling. While Dafoe gives a calm and composed performance, Gainsbourg's is intense, painful, and devastating.

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Visually, Antichrist is quite stunning. The opening sequence, the prologue, is nothing short of spectacular with its black and white cinematography, the fantastic camera work, and the slow-motion. The music opera music that accompanies the tragedy, the intensity of it. It's a pure work of art, easily one of the best openings I've ever seen. The rest of the film, well, it's not so beautiful. The camera work is still impressive, and the slow-motion is still wonderfully used, but there are too many disturbing images to consider the rest of the film visually beautiful --there's no beauty in a penis, Dafoe's character but probably, certainly a body double's, ejaculating blood nor in Gainsbourg's character cutting off her clitoris. If anything, they are unforgettable.

I also had another issue with Antichrist. It's hard, if not impossible, to categorize the film. Is it a horror? Or is a psychological drama? I guess a bit of both as von Trier himself said he wanted to make a horror but ended up making something else. Anyway, the sense of dread that builds throughout the film, the brutality, the physical and sexual violence, they sure make for an extremely unsettling film.

New August Titles: Cult of Personality

Downey does Chaplin

Like scanning virtual tea leaves, sometimes it's fun to look for meaning in a particular batch of new Netflix titles. The month of August might easily be called Biography Month given how many titles focus on the life of a singular personage. From documentaries like Hawking (2013), Chasing Shackleton (2014), and Pumping Iron (1977) to fictionalized accounts like Chaplin (1992), Evita (1996), and Prefontaine (1997)--or even movies named after their main characters, such as Sabrina (1954), Rocky (1976), Mad Max (1979), and Richard Linklater's The Newton Boys (1998)--it's tough not to ponder the existence of a guiding hand in the form of some mischievous Netflix programmer or puckish artificial intelligence. (The more conspiracy-minded among you can imagine the Biography Channel staging a behind-the-scenes coup, or at least greasing back-room palms for a bit of devious cross-marketing.)

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