JP in the Dark: A review of Dancer in the Dark

[knivesout]

Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Director/Writer: Lars Von Trier

Quick Rating: 10 Question Marks out of 10!!!

Dancer in the Dark is an immensely problematic movie that nearly overwhelmed my attempts to come to any coherent assessment.

The plot, such as it is, is amazingly simplistic and convoluted at the same time. Icelandic singer Bjork plays Selma, an emigrant from Czechoslovakia, a factory worker in 1960's USA. She is going blind due to a congenital defect, and works extra hours and odd jobs to save up enough money to pay for an operation that can save her son's eyesight, although it is too late for her. She is sustained by a love for musicals, the whole Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers song and dance routine. She is involved in rehearsals for a production of The Sound of Music, although her failing eyesight hinders her.

Selma's landlord, a policeman, is on the verge of financial disaster thanks to his wife's expensive tastes. He learns of Selma's secret stash of money and steals it. Selma approaches him to take her money back. In the ensuing struggle, the policeman shoots himself with his own gun and then begs Selma to finish him off, which she does. She flees with her money, is picked up by her hopeless suitor, Jeff, deposits the money with a hospital that can operate on her son, and then goes to watch a rehearsal by her music group. This is where the police catch her. A trial follows, a manifestly biassed affair that reminds one of the trial in Camus' The Stranger, for instance, but far more simplistically unjust. Selma is sentanced to hang. Her best friend attempts to find her a better lawyer, but she refuses, insisting the money be used for her son's operation instead. And in the end, Selma hangs.

I haven't even mentioned the oddities of how this movie is shot, the often jarring, occasionally brilliant, musical interludes, the different visual styles and so on. If you're like me, you're already a bit bewildered with just the plot summary. Selma seems to exist in a sort of fantasy world of choreographed dance routines and blithe song sequences, and it becomes increasingly possible through the movie that she is rather simple in the head as well. So what is this story about? Is it telling us that this is not a fit world for the innocent and naive? Perhaps it's suggesting that immersion in a fantasy world of music and dance is not conducive to a well-rounded life? Don't trust your landlord? Who knows!

And now to those dance sequences. I am no fan of musicals, but I could at least appreciate some of what was done here. One sequence starts with Selma listening to machine sounds in the factory, and slowly imagining that they form a musical tune. This transition is brilliant, and a real tribute to Bjork's musical vision. Other sequences are so wildly inappropriate, and often so utterly at odds with the real situation that one must surmise that this is all a terribly ironic comment on dreams and reality, on the contrast between the cozy constants of the musical drama and the sordid vagaries of real life. Particularly intersting is the visual contrast between the real-life scenes, shot with hand cameras and an uncompromising adherence to the Dogme 95 'oath of chastity' in film making and the dance sequences which are lavish, over the top, employing hundreds of cameras, scores of extras and a richer colour pallette. Fantasy seems more real than reality. But real life is where you die.

What really held the movie together for me was Bjork's performance. She is effortlessly natural in playing the childlike, often cretinous but oddly touching lead character. Catherine Denueve puts in a good performance as Selma's long-suffering best friend, as does David Morse as the treacherous landlord. Siobhan Fallon is particularly effective as a prison guard who bonds with Selma on death row.

But leaving aside the memorable, unusual lead player and the captivating score she's provided for the film, what is my final verdict on this movie? It seems that most poeple either loved or hated it. I can categorically claim neither reaction - there was much in it that seemed too calculated, and other aspects that seemed very poorly thought out. The core story hardly seemed worth telling - but then again, perhaps it was, as an antidote to the feel-good and glamour oriented stuff that dominates the mainsteam cinema scene. However, can a work of art exist purely as a reactive phenomena? I don't know. I don't even know if that's what this movie does, or even if it is a work of art. Nevertheless, it challenged me as a viewer, and made me think about movies and what they mean, and I suppose that makes it worth the watch.

[littlemissattitude]

You know, it's odd. I've seen ads and previews for this film, but I've never been that interested in seeing it. Bjork strikes me as an odd little person, and much of what she has done in music sort of just leaves me cold. However...

However, once in a while, she does something that I find really striking, for example, the video for her song "Pagan Poetry". It is an odd video, and I only saw it on an MTV "Uncesored" show (it couldn't be shown otherwise as Bjork is, well, mostly unclothed through most of the video), but there was something amazing about it all the same.

Now, having read your review of "Dancer in the Dark", JP, I think I want to see the film. It does sound like a confusing film, but you've also made it sound quite intriguing.

[I, Brian]

I think we have the soundtrack - didn;t eralise she was in the film - will have to look out for it.

[knivesout]

Now this is strictly second hand information, but a friend told me he saw an interview in which Bjork said that Von Trier had initially contacted her only to write the score for the film. However, he became convinced that she was the right actress for the movie, and asked her to take the role. When she demurred, he seems to have said that he wouldn't use her music if she didn't take the role. A bit of arm twisting, but I think the results were worth it.

Some have said that this movie is a comment on the emigrant experience in the US, and the clash between law and real human situations, but I did not find it realistic enough to be a very significant statement in that context- I saw it more as a very odd character sketch and a partly ironic meditation on the role of fantasy in everyday life.

Bjork's music is way bizarre, but I'm really beginning to love it. A bit of an acquired taste, but that's true of nearly anything worthwhile.

[I, Brian]

I've been something of a Bjork fan since "Life's Too Good" with the Sugarcubes - her solo work was a bit odd to get used to, because she absolutely refuses to be tied down to any style. But if you listen to any of her solo albums, you'll possibily find at least one track you'll think is absolutely brilliant, and the rest simply follows.