Manderlay (2005)
Directed by Lars von Trier
In 1933, a young woman and her father discover an Alabama plantation whose inhabitants live as if slavery had never been abolished. Feeling a sense of duty to those behind the heavy gates, she stays to liberate the people and see them through their first harvest. With four of her father's colleagues and a lawyer, she faces the daunting task of resurrecting the place known as Manderlay.
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What critics compared Manderlay to
I’m curious what Michael Haneke or Lars von Trier would have to say about “Joker,” considering the rigor with which each filmmaker has employed in their trenchant social satires (see Haneke’s “Funny Games” or von Trier’s “Manderlay”).
A night-time sequence, in which Walter runs out of the darkness towards Chris, has the same sense of American gothic dread as David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows , while the humour vacillates between the broader strokes of Rusty Cundieff’s underrated Tales from the Hood and the insidious cruelty of Lars von Trier’s Manderlay .
But after the excruciating juvenile provocation that was Dogville , I felt no need to see the "sequel," Manderlay , in which Bryce Dallas Howard stepped into the female-punching-bag role that Nicole Kidman refused to reprise.
And it was sleekly photographed by Anthony Dod Mantle, who also shot Von Trier's "Dogville" and "Manderlay."
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 . . .
In contrast to the stark Brechtian theatrical stylings of Manderlay (2005) and Dogville (2003), or the raw naturalism of The Idiots (1998), Antichrist is a visually lavish film for Von Trier.
The Danish director Lars von Trier ("Breaking the Waves," "Dogville," "Manderlay") has an inordinately and unjustifiably high reputation.
DP Anthony Dod Mantle, whose work on Slumdog Millionaire it's safe to say has been seen by more viewers than will ever even hear of Antichrist also shot Von Trier's Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005).
David Edelstein reviewed Lars von Trier's Dogville , and Dana Stevens reviewed his Manderlay .
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He’s made two of three films in his “American Trilogy” (“Dogville,” “Manderlay”) despite never visiting these shores and the apocalyptic science in “Melancholia” is, by his own admission, unrealistic.
Von Trier’s previous three internationally distributed efforts - Melancholia, Antichrist, and Manderlay - have all fallen victim to von Trier’s artistic self-indulgence.
Given the ineffectiveness of such recent Lars von Trier efforts as Dogville, Antichrist, and Manderlay, Nymph()maniac: Vol. 1 can't help but come off as a comparatively (and refreshingly) mainstream endeavor that fares much, much better than one might've anticipated - although it's ultimately clear that both Nymph()maniac: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 could (and should) have been compressed into one streamlined film (ie von Trier isn't, despite his best efforts, able to keep things interesting for the cumulative running time of over four hours).
Von Trier has often worked on the extreme edge of the permissible: interpolating hard-core sex scenes into his social satire The Idiots, positing that full-blown slavery had extended into the American 1930s in Manderlay, putting Gainsbourg through simulated ordeals of self-mutilation in Antichrist.
Unlike some of his recent dirges (“Antichrist,” “Manderlay”), he actually seems to be having a good time telling the saga of Justine & Michael’s mostly-disastrous nuptials.