Dogville
Dogville is simultaneously one of the best movies I've seen this year and one of the hardest to watch. "Good" and "fun to watch" are often too loosely interchanged—despite the prevailing attitude in Hollywood, good doesn't have to equal fun to watch, and despite the beliefs of the Austrian filmmaking community, a movie can be fun to watch and still good. Dogville is the second of the Dogme films that I've seen (the first being Italian for Beginners) and I continue to be impressed. The director, Lars von Trier, removes everything that might distract from the unfolding drama, even the walls of the buildings and all scenery beyond the current action. The film is shot entirely on one black stage with no set changes (not that there's much of a set to change) so everything rests on the interaction of the characters, which is roughly the definition of the Dogme way. I know that this style might sound extremely boring, but after twenty minutes I had almost completely forgotten about the difference because I was so engaged in the story and characters, which the sparse setting and some terrific acting make possible.
When you strip away so much, you've got to have a lot of substance underneath and this movie has more than enough to go around. The set is small, the drama is more subtle than grand, but the intentions are epic, as I think the invocations of Greek literature are meant to indicate. Each chapter conjures up a new metaphor for interpretation and at the end you're left with so many layers that your head spins. Is it a nuanced theological argument about God's gift of grace and our inability to accept it? An investigation of the morality of forgiveness and vengeance? A sociological examination of the Protestant work ethic and its implications? A political indictment of the consequences of the American dream? To me, it is all of these things and much more. I was most affected by my own theological interpretation (big surprise) but, given that this is supposed to be the first film in a trilogy about America, the America stuff was probably supposed to be in the forefront, although I will admit that this theme didn't occur to me until the final song and ending credits.
Of course what I liked most about Dogville is that it made me think through all the hypotheses listed above, whether I agreed with them or not. I know this seems sad—shouldn't all movies make us think, as cliché and watered down as that sounds?—but it takes something to make any kind of art that is really engaging. As I sit here now, reading through all the critics' reviews and realizing that most either disliked it (New Yorker, Ebert, Metacritic) or interpreted it differently than me, my enthusiasm is not deflating as it normally does, because last night I was watching this movie and thinking about Billy Budd, Max Weber, and Homer. That's a good night at the movies to me.