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von Trier responds to an other terrible part of his terrible year. Spoilers for the movie contained within.

Dogville is so much more historically accurate than either Gladiator or 300 though.

Does anyone have a hard time believing that LvT is having a hard time about anything that results in people talking about lvT?

Does anyone wish this film was made like a normal movie and not on a soundstage? I understand it's to make it clear that the movie is to be taken metaphorically, but maybe there were other ways to make it obviously metaphorical without abstracting the story from reality so ridiculously much.

Spoiler

Anyway, I think it's interesting how it seems like the movie acknowledges that Grace's revenge was wrong on some level (the camera focusing on the crying baby getting shot), yet everyone who watches this movie will cheer on her revenge because of the circumstances, and that revenge takes place right after a long conversation about how morality shouldn't depend on circumstances. I guess LVT is calling out the audience in that sense.

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: The scenes of Kidman being taking advantage of "behind closed doors" wouldn't have anything like the same kind of impact on a traditional set. Walls are not a valid excuse for this kind of behavior.

I feel like there are a lot ways to convey the idea that the whole town knew about her abuse without literally taking away the walls.

But that is the way that von Trier thought was most effective for his purposes. There being other ideas doesn't make this a bad idea.

Peter-H wrote:I feel like there are a lot ways to convey the idea that the whole town knew about her abuse without literally taking away the walls.

It's getting at far more than that. It's not just that they knew about it. The film is questioning the whole societal construct of small groups of people shutting out the world around them by containing themselves in boxes. There's a scene where Kidman is being raped and five feet away on the same stage people are just carrying on with their lives like normal, which they're allowed to do because there's a simple white line between them. Half the power of the statement this makes comes from the production gimmick.

Watched this masterpiece again on election eve (as one does in this climate), and this write-up from earlier this year in Rolling Stone does a pretty good job of scratching the surface of my thoughts on why it is a more vital picture than ever, and should be experiencing a second life in the Trump era (if folks hadn't been so quick to 'cancel' LvT, creatively and otherwise, that is...)

For me Manderlay is really the one that's grown in my estimation over the years. Wish someone would put these out on Blu-ray...

Dogville had more of an impact on me than Manderlay, which I just watched last week for the first time. Still, I find myself thinking back on the latter quite a lot these past few days, especially John Hurt's brilliant voice speaking the film's last lines.

domino harvey wrote: Tue Nov 06, 2018 5:26 pm For me Manderlay is really the one that's grown in my estimation over the years. Wish someone would put these out on Blu-ray...

Dogville is streaming via Showtime in 1080p (wherever Showtime programming is streaming... in my case Prime Video) and it looked pretty great, considering the limitations of that film. But yes, would love to see a Criterion sometime.

I still haven't seen Manderlay or The Idiots among von Trier's [available in the U.S. as of today] oeuvre and really have no excuses for either since I have never regretted watching one of his films. Antichrist is the one that's been growing on me, as I was unconvinced about it the first time around but would consider it among my 15 or so favorite films of that decade now.

Just chiming in to agree that Dogville is extraordinary and timeless, and deserving of a Blu-ray release (ideally with the Dogville Confessions making-of included as a special feature). It stands as one of von Trier's two or three best films and probably the one that's the least "problematic" from a gender-politics perspective, considering that it's the rare film in his oeuvre in which we get to see the beleaguered heroine enact vengeance upon her oppressors.

Small quibble: I've never liked the shot of that CGI dog. But at least it's followed by one of the most trenchant closing-credits sequences in cinema.

EDIT: I find Manderlay definitely worth a watch though overall I find it less successful both narratively and in terms of its ideas. And it never fails to bug me that Nicole Kidman and James Caan's characters are now played by Bryce Dallas Howard and Willem Dafoe.

Always amused by this snippet of a conversation between Paul Thomas Anderson and Lars von Trier in 2004(05?) regarding that trenchant closing-credits sequence:

PTA: How did you come up with the idea of ending Dogville with "Young Americans"?

LVT: Paul Bettany and I were great David Bowie fans, and at a certain point when the spirit was quite low on the set, we were playing it over loudspeakers so everybody was dancing to it. I always loved that melody very much, but I didn't understand the lyrics. I still don't understand them. [laughs]

PTA: Absolutely. I understand "Young Americans!"

LVT: But I thought the lyric was, "All night she was the young American," but it is not. It is "All night she wants a young American," which is different. [laughs]

[The conversation is interrupted by a phone call for PTA, warning of his imminent flight to New York]

LVT: Don't worry.

PTA: I'm not worried. Do I look worried? Lars, I'm sitting here with you--you're my hero. I can't be worried.

It certainly does fit better if one hears LvT's surely not uncommon misinterpretation of that chorus.

I really love Dogville mostly because it's the right kind of up front and in your face kind of film. But what's most remarkable is that it's achieved with so little. For a nearly three hour film that looks the way it does you'd think it'd be subject to more jokes and yet it isn't. As for von Trier not understanding what Young Americans means I'm not so sure about that. I always thought that bookend was pretty damning, particularly at the end of Manderlay as the lyrics were very much in line with the ending photos.

The song as a whole still fits very well, of course, but if misheard in the way von Trier did, it does seem to be speaking about Grace more specifically/directly

To be honest I've never really understood/paid close attention to the lyrics, beyond the obvious connection to Grace as a "young American." I think the song works primarily because its jaunty, rollicking tone contrasts so jarringly with the brutality of the photos.

PTA interviewed Lars von Trier!? Where can I read that in its entirety?

ianthemovie wrote: Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:32 pm PTA interviewed Lars von Trier!? Where can I read that in its entirety?

Here!

David Bowie wrote: “No story. Just young Americans. It’s about a newly-wed couple who don’t know if they really like each other. Well, they do, but they don’t know if they do or don’t.”

All the way from Washington
Her bread-winner begs off the bathroom floor
We live for just these twenty years
Do we have to die for the fifty more?


Topical too:

Do you remember, your President Nixon?
Do you remember, the bills you have to pay?
Or even yesterday?

Whether or not von Trier intended it to or not those lyrics have a very cold underside in what appears on the surface to be a rather jaunty tune. I think that feels a lot like the Dogville I remember and certainly America as a whole.

You ain't a pimp and you ain't a hustler
A pimp's got a Cadi and a lady got a Chrysler
Black's got respect, and white's got his soul train
Mama's got cramps, and look at your hands ache

Has anybody seen the German blu-ray that somehow snuck out late last year to comment on its quality? I can't find any reviews, or mention of it anywhere really

therewillbeblus wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2020 11:14 pm Has anybody seen the German blu-ray that somehow snuck out late last year to comment on its quality? I can't find any reviews, or mention of it anywhere really

Hi, I did not find vidcaps on the net. I downloaded a 1080 rip before buying it despite the excellent reviews of the blu-ray at amazon.de.
I have bought in the end the German Blu-Ray.
There is no English subtitles.
Please note and be warned (but that's really a minor "issue" for me) that the inter-titled between the chapters of the movie are in German. (Which implied that the transfer and master was done from a German copy of the movie)
The picture quality is excellent in terms of HD details, color grading (it remind me kind of the Breaking The Waves Criterion stunning transfer)- I won't dare to say that it's as good as Breaking The Waves, but it's really excellent. If "Breaking The Waves" got a 5/5 for PQ at blu-ray.com; I would give to "Dogville" 4,8/5 for PQ. ("Dogville" on German Blu-Ray is better than the WEB 1080 rip which preceded the German BR release (apparently the 2 sources are different since the WEB 1080 transfer had the inter-titled in English not in German).
I sincerely hope that Criterion will release one day Dogville (for the complete bonus (like the French DVD release) and Melancholia which IMHO are among the best LVT movies. The early LVT Criterion needs to be upgrade in Blu-Ray too.

I know that there is a German box set; where Dogville is in this box set for about just 25 euros. Some movies have subtitles, but not all, like Dogville.

I also ordered a copy of it recently and was irritated to find that, as Rupert Pupkin points out, the intertitles are all in German. A minor thing, maybe, but had I known that I probably would not have bought it. The picture quality is indeed very good but that irks me. There are also no special features to speak of so the only reason to get this would be for the high quality of the image. I agree with Rupert, a Criterion edition of this would be most welcome, especially if it would include the Dogville Confessions as a special feature.

By the way, on a recent episode of The Film Comment Podcast Nicholas Rapold refers briefly to King Vidor's Our Daily Bread as a possible inspiration for Dogville and Manderlay, a connection which I found useful. In addition to the fact that it's a Depression-Era portrait of a rural American community, Our Daily Bread is apparently a sequel to Vidor's The Crowd, but with the characters now played by different actors, much in the same way that Manderlay re-casts several of the roles of Dogville.

Awesome, I just bought it. That's frustrating about the intertitles though.

It's been a while since I've seen this, but it might be the best depiction of how the Hobbesian nature of humanity is hidden under a very thin layer of social constructs, unveiling the actuality of moral flexibility. The ability to rationalize is the only ego function these people have to remain civil, and they rationalize towards their own impulses and selfish drives like a magnet, the word "more" always dominating and the manipulation of socio-political ideas to service individualistic desires flourishing in the presence of unfamiliar variables that disrupt their passive routine, suggesting that structure is a disguise and a weak support that doesn't change character. von Trier may be picking on America, but this is really about Western individualistic cultures in general, maybe even humanity, and American is the scapegoat, because well why not.

This may be my favorite Kidman perf, and watching her maintain her own 'innocence' in the face of lurking evils in the complex townspeople is chilling, with Kidman imbuing empathy while the people she interacts with battle with themselves and see through her, increasing the emotional distance as she is systematically dehumanized. It's horrifying especially if you can relate to them at all in the path of rationalizing towards finding motivation or stake and realizing we've all done this (hopefully to significantly lesser extents) and where that comes from.. I'd actually argue that this is a sick kind of humanism that becomes the inverse of the expected definition while maintaining the core ideas, just less optimistically. So this becomes is a fable that shines the mirror on all of us, in our faces and down our throats. We don't even get barriers to provide us with compartmentalization to separate the horrors from each other, but hey, I guess it shows how artificial our ideologies are anyways.

I just like that even when things twist around and Grace becomes the dominant figure she's still just doing things in response to or for the approval of others. I can relate to that quite a lot!