The Music of Life
FILM: Dancer in the Dark
DIRECTOR: Lars Von Trier
STARRING: Bjork, Catherine Deneuve
GRADE: B
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FACTORY WORKER SELMA (BJORK) SEEKS HELP FROM HER LANDLORD BILL (DAVID
MORSE) IN LARS VON TRIER'S LATEST `DOGMA' FILM, DANCER IN THE
DARK.
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For the entire two decades I have written this column, I have been a fierce
advocate of independent cinema. I was singling out and praising low-budget
films before Miramax was founded, back when Quentin Tarantino was still a video
clerk. And make no mistake, I still find the individual vision and artistic
focus present in most independent films far more satisfying than the blatant,
lowest-common-denominator approach of typical commercial releases.
Still, I worry about a trend in independent cinema I see getting a
toehold on the movement. This trend exhibited itself recently in Miguel
Arteta's grainy, eye-numbing Chuck and Buck and is most egregiously
manifest in the patently ridiculous Dogma movement exemplified on area screens
by Thomas Vinterberg's 1998 The Celebration and Soren Kragh-Jacobsen's
Mifune earlier this year. Dogma's "vow of chastity" demands that
filmmakers eschew musical augmentation, artificial lighting, set construction
and other examples of cinematic "tricks." This nutty attempt at "purity" mostly
results in pictures with bad visuals and ragged sound. To me, for a filmmaker
to abandon the many technological advantages of his medium is akin to a
novelist deciding to write fiction without adjectives.
The gifted Lars Von Trier, whose terrific Breaking the Waves
was one of my favorite films of 1996, is a founder of the Dogma movement. (His
1998 Dogma faithful, The Idiots, will make its local debut at the
upcoming New Orleans Film Festival.) But why he wants to waste himself in
service to this twisted ideal, I can't fathom.
Von Trier's current Dancer in the Dark is not technically a
Dogma film, but it shares many of that movement's worst traits. It has been
shot on video, extensively with hand-held cameras. The result is a washed-out,
grainy look and an utterly annoying
herky-jerky style. And that's
monumentally too bad because at its best the new film is
one of considerable
power.
Set in the mid-1960s, Dancer in the Dark is the story of
Selma Jezkova (Bjork), a Czech immigrant to America's Pacific Northwest, where
she lives with her 10-year-old son, Gene (Vladica Kostic), in a trailer and
works in a tool and die factory. Selma's leisure life, such as it is, consists
of rehearsing for an amateur production of The Sound of Music and going
to the cinema to watch old-time Hollywood musicals. Selma has serious problems
in her life. She's rapidly going blind from a genetic condition she's known
about all her life and has passed on to her son. Guilty that she's brought a
child into the world to suffer her own fate, Selma has relocated to the United
States with the
singular intention of buying Gene an operation that will
spare him. To that end,
she works double shifts, further supplements her
income by carding hairpins, and saves every penny she can.
Selma's gritty resolve might make her grim. But on the contrary,
she's blessed with an almost ethereal sweetness, and those who know her in
almost any capacity regard her with unqualified affection. Those in her small
circle of working-class American acquaintances do whatever they can to help
her. Her landlords, Bill (David Morse) and Linda (Cara Seymour), overlook
opportunities to raise her rent and look after Gene when Selma has to work
overtime. Her best friend, Kathy (the ever-magnificent Catherine Deneuve, who
sparkles despite Von Trier's neglecting to account for her French accent), goes
so far as to do factory work for which Selma gets paid.
Still, despite the generosity of her friends, Selma's circumstances
are desperate. Can she save enough money for Gene's operation before she loses
her sight altogether? How's she going to survive once sightlessness has
deprived her of her livelihood? And yet, through it all, Selma evinces that
lust for the tiny treasures of life that American Beauty writer Alan
Ball and director Sam Mendes locate in a swirling plastic bag. For Selma, the
riches of life arrive in the rhythms she hears in a passing train or the clicks
and clacks of a factory at work. Stimulated by sound, which will soon become
her primary sense, she indulges a rich fantasy existence, turning her own
labors and those of her friends into the choreographed production numbers in
her adored musicals.
Some viewers will be shocked when Selma bursts into song and dance,
and though perhaps appropriately symbolic of Selma's meager circumstances, the
productions she imagines are perhaps too pedestrian. The notion that her
imagination is as rich as her life
is poor would have proved a superior
choice. And certainly, Von Trier should have stuck with the traumas of poverty
and looming blindness rather than moving on to include grand theft and
homicide. We grasp
that Selma is a simple soul, but she's plenty intelligent
enough to understand the
advantages of safety and interest provided in a
bank account.
The trial that occupies a significant portion of the film's last
third proves a palpably weak contrivance. Condemning witness testimony goes
unchallenged. The accused shows surprisingly little instinct for
self-protection. Innuendos are alchemized into conclusions in a way no judge or
defense lawyer would tolerate for an instant.
In sum, Dancer in the Dark ultimately careens off its
narrative track. The picture runs at least a half hour too long, and it's often
hard and even irritating to watch. Despite such flaws, however, the serious
filmgoer will feel the picture is worthwhile. Selma is a thoroughly involving
character about whom we come to care a great deal. Much of the credit for this
must go to Bjork, who captured best actress honors last spring at the Cannes
Film Festival. Previously known for her career as a singer, Bjork is
reminiscent of a youthful Genevieve Bujold and speaks with the beguiling lilt
of Isabella Rossellini. Her natural attractiveness is
often concealed here
underneath a smudge of factory grease and behind black-rimmed glasses as thick
as the headlights on a
tank. But her smile is like a shaft of sunshine
falling through low gray clouds on a late winter day. Bjork makes us ache for
Selma even when the script is doing her character a disservice.
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