Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Directed by Lars von Trier
Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her young son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life becomes increasingly difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.
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What critics compared Dancer in the Dark to
…as well as "My Favorite Things" and "So Long Farewell", a pair of catchy little numbers which were used to affecting effect in Lars Von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark", in which Björk and others participate in an amateur production of "The Sound of Music".
References are everywhere--Selma regularly attends showings of Busby Berkeley tunefests with her best friend and co-worker Kathy (Deneuve), who often has to verbally describe the onscreen action to her; Selma and Kathy spend a number of their off hours rehearsing for a community theater production of The Sound of Music; and, most notably, Selma has elaborate fantasies of her life as a musical.
She and her best friend Kathy (Catherine Deneuve) escape their dull lives by going to musicals and staging an amateur production of "The Sound of Music."
Living in a trailer on some land owned by local cop, Bill (DAVID MORSE), and his wife, Linda (CARA SEYMOUR), Selma tries not to call any undue attention to herself, but her bouts of daydreaming and strong interest in musicals - she's rehearsing for the lead in a local production of "The Sound of Music" - often calls for her close friend and co-worker, Kathy (CATHERINE DENEUVE), to cover for her at work and on the stage.
Introduced in one of the film's most charming scenes, a Guffman-like rehearsal of an amateur staging of The Sound of Music, Selma turns out to be a bit of a pill, hard on begoggled son Gene (Vladica Kostic), unappreciative of her long-suffering friend and fellow immigrant worker Kathy (Catherine Deneuve, her Cinderella beauty and French accent shining through), and dismissive of the lovelorn Jeff (Peter Stormare), a local yokel who seems a cross between endearing idiot savant and pathetic stalker.
"Melancholia" apparently was inspired by von Trier's history of dark depression -- a history that won't surprise viewers of such past von Trier films as "Breaking the Waves," "Dancer in the Dark" and "Dogville," which abused their heroines with almost Sadean determination.
Oh sure, I concede that he has demonstrated an undeniable ability to get strong and memorable performances from actresses as varied as Emily Watson ("Breaking the Waves"), Nicole Kidman ("Dogville") and even pop star Bjork ("Dancer in the Dark") and his films usually contain at least one or two absolutely sublime cinematic passages (such as the haunting prologue to "Antichrist" in which passionate lovemaking and unimaginable tragedy are woven together into a haunting and unforgettable tapestry).
I had read a fair amount about the new movie from Lars von Trier ("Dancer in the Dark," "Antichrist"), but it still took me by surprise with its compassion, beauty and plot details.
My full disclosure for the evening is that, by custom, I have absolutely no use for the man: my feelings for his work has ranged anywhere from grudging admiration ( Dancer in the Dark ) to profound irritation ( Dogville ), and my feelings on his last picture, Antichrist , are not so very different from "loathing".
In many ways this bizarre, nihilistic meditation is a dreary, redundant, pretentious bore, continuing Von Trier’s gloomy cinematic exploration of the anguished suffering of women, as evidenced in “Breaking the Waves,” “Dogville” and “Dancer in the Dark.”
It's a pitch-dark theme for a film, although we expect nothing less from the filmmaker who made "Dancer in the Dark" and "Antichrist."
La La Land is not volatile like Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York or Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark .
That Chazelle doesn’t take the Dancer in the Dark route of bluntly oscillating between extremes of fantasy and degradation is a plus, but the ‘reality’ end of this supposed dialectic is so rooted in archetype that a dialectic barely even registers.
That hasn't kept them from being produced, of course, or from garnering acclaim and awards and significant box office, but they usually have to be modified in some way: revisionist musicals like All That Jazz or New York, New York ; stage-to-screen musicals like Chicago or Mamma Mia ; deliberately awkward "modern" musicals like Dancer in the Dark or Everyone Says I Love You ; and the animated musicals Disney turns out with regularity.
And the fact that the man has messy personal stories when it comes to women -- his mom confessed on her deathbed that the person he always believed to be his biological father wasn't (his real dad turned out to be her boss); he reportedly abandoned his pregnant wife for their young babysitter; etc. -- has provided his critics with plenty of ammo to make the claim that instead of idolizing his lead female characters (in Breaking the Waves, Dancer In the Dark and now this), he actually despises them as only a chauvinist pig can, by putting them through all manner of humiliation.
Similar fates, you may recall, befell Emily Watsonâs Bess in Breaking the Waves and Björkâs Selma in Dancer in the Dark.
Like Dancer in the Dark, the director's previous feature, Dogville is set in the United States and acted in English.
In Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark, virtuous women endure unjust indignities at the hands of heartless townsfolk eager to project their own bigotry and insecurities upon their beatific female compatriots.
One such filmmaker would be Lars von Trier, the creator of such uncomfortable viewing experiences as "Breaking the Waves" (in which Emily Watson's character had conversations with God and played both roles) and "Dancer in the Dark" (featuring Bjork as a guileless, nearly blind factory worker who winds up on death row, thanks to bad luck and poor communication).
Von Trier/Jekyll made the audacious films Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark, both inventive, provocative attempts to touch the hem of Dreyer’s garment.
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While Gainsbourg – the daughter of another great sexual and artistic provocateur: the Gallic icon Serge Gainsbourg – may be initially perceived as another in von Trier’s long line of damaged female characters (see the director’s Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, and Antichrist for reference), it’s her character’s younger self, played with wide-eyed coquettishness by Stacy Martin, who initiates the dirty deeds that make up the main story.
Sure, von Trier has shown glimmers of humor in some of his previous films, mostly of the dark and twisted variety; you have to go all the way back to 1998’s “The Idiots,” or even some scattered moments of “Breaking the Waves” or “Dancer in the Dark.”
Now, after the epic misery of Dancer in the Dark, Antichrist and Melancholia , he returns to the mischievous spirit of The Idiots with what is arguably his greatest film so far, a colossal saga of lust and life, a magnum opus that recapitulates everything he has done before, encapsulating major themes, character types and even scenes from previous films, and integrating them into an ambitious, intelligent and vivid work of tremendous depth and breadth.
In movies like Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, and Dogville, Lars von Trier puts his pure-hearted heroines through almost unimaginable torment, piling misery on top of misery until it’s impossible to believe that they won’t suffer complete mental and physical breakdowns (and sometimes they do).
Nymphomaniac Volume I is possibly the best movie Lars von Trier has made since Dancer in the Dark.
Lurking underneath any commentary one might offer is the disquieting suspicion that the Danish director of such unforgettable films as Dancer in the Dark and Melancholia has already considered these criticisms and has loaded his films, in one way or another, with subtle retorts to each of them.
It's a brilliant tribute to many things: Paris's bohemian era, the evolution of pop music from Gilbert & Sullivan to Nirvana and musicals from "Gold Diggers of 1933" to Lars von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark."
It has been described as the love-it-or-hate-it movie of the season -- much like 2000's equally bold (and far superior) musical Dancer in the Dark -- but I didn't love it or hate it; mostly I just stared at it in a trance of indifference, trying to stay awake.
Like "Dancer in the Dark," "The Knight's Tale" and his own version of "Romeo and Juliet," Luhrmann's latest is part of the New Rave.
Similar to other recent films, such as "A Knight¹s Tale" and the depressing yet fascinating musical "Dancer In The Dark," "Moulin Rouge" tampers with its genre, defying expectations.
It should be apparent from the above that we're not dealing with a human interest story on a par with Dancer in the Dark, which is one of the few musicals which could conceivably have succeeded as a purely dramatic endeavour.
An incredible production of a pretty good movie (and like Lars Von Trier's "Dancer In the Dark," a great experiment in birthing the genre's next wave) "Moulin Rouge" is definitely a case of style over substance.
Before its Sundance debut, Kent told the Hollywood Reporter that her career kicked off in style once she’d sent an “unbusinesslike email” to Lars von Trier after seeing “Dancer in the Dark.”
Here is the Wellesian Gothic chamber (Europa); here is the Brechtian Basilica (Dogville) and here is the Grotto of Utter Lunacy, enshrining musicals about capital punishment starring Björk (Dancer in the Dark).
For me, most of this was absurdly abstract in a way that his best films – Breaking the Waves , Dancer in the Dark – are not.
Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark were powerful, unsettling, transformative movie experiences, even if their endings came uncomfortably close to making the case for virgin sacrifice.
It's been called a masterpiece and laughable trash, but instead turns out to be a thought-provoking piece of work that is emotionally distancing, yet connects on a primal level with its stunningly rendered images (cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, far from his "Slumdog Millionaire" experience) and Lynchian rumbling sound (Kristian Eidnes Andersen, "Dancer in the Dark," "The Boss of It All."
In all his best known works -- from "Breaking the Waves" (1996) through "Dancer in the Dark" (2000), "Dogville" (2003) and "Manderlay" (2005) -- Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier has repeated the the same template: He gives us an appealing female protagonist . . .
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With the song and dance staged as elaborate fantasies, "Chicago" doesn’t resemble last year’s "Mou-lin Rouge" as much as Lars von Trier’s "Dancer in the Dark."
But the device works better in theory than in practice -- unlike, say, 2000's daring "Dancer in the Dark," which may be the ultimate surrealistic musical-in-your-mind movie.
The list of movies that feature blind characters is long: Charlie Chaplin's 1931 "City Lights," "Butterflies Are Free" (1972), "Jennifer 8" (1992), "Scent of a Woman" (1992) and the 2000 "Dancer in the Dark" are just a few that come to mind.