Dogville (Denmark, 2004, Lars VonTrier) AKA The Passion of the Grace

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, where to begin? Dogville is a film that studies with cool Northern European pessimism the debasing effects of the social organization of human beings. Mixing mythological references (some of the character’s names: Olympia, Pandora, Diana, Jason, Athena, Grace, Thomas and Moses) with theatrical conventions, writer/director Lars von Trier has hammered together an unforgettable film that aims to make a profound statement about the terrible disease of being a social being in an often inhumane world.

He not only aims, he splits the arrow. Dogville is as deeply insightful as it is deeply disturbing, a movie that will challenge you intellectually and punish you emotionally. Put as succinctly as possible, Dogville is a "holy fuck!" movie going experience. At this point, a word of warning. It is pretty much impossible not to discuss the ideas at play in this film without revealing some pretty important plot points, so if you wanna preserve your first-time viewing experience of this film, I warn you that you move forward at your own peril. In other words, take these words: MAJOR SPOILER ALERT and sprinkle them in front of every single paragraph below.

Von Trier borrows some of the conventional framework of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in order to look more carefully at the forces that operate in the dark corners of human social organizations. While Wilder found conventions are cohesive, bringing goodness and heartwarming sentiment to the people of Grover’s Corners, von Trier finds the coagulating agent of Dogville to be much more corrosive influences such as claustrophobia and xenophobia. Continuing the Our Town comparison is the droll voice-over narration of John Hurt, which is so subtlely (and sometimes not-so-subtlely) sarcastic, but with sarcasm so well cloaked in delicious Seuss-like sing-songy aphorisms that we smile when we would otherwise cringe.

After a brief prologue that introduces us to the town, the story is launched by the sudden appearance of Grace (Nicole Kidman) during a proverbial dark and stormy night. On the run from some gangsters, she is looking for a place to hide. Tom (Paul Bettamy, who excels in this Calvinist role) is Dogville’s moral authority and philosopher, and in he believes that Grace’s appearance can be an opportunity to test Dogville’s moral character. Grace gives herself to Tom as a gift, but also to try to rise above her past, to escape an upbringing that taught her to be arrogant. In Dogville, she will learn not only humility but humiliation as well. In a startling turnaround from Cold Mountain, where her character, hovering near death’s door, managed to hold onto her alabaster skin and wonderfully-quaffed hair, in Dogsville Nicole Kidman gives a thoroughly credible and painfully honest performance as Grace. Matching her stride for stride in the key role of doubting Thomas is Paul Bettamy, whose moral certitude and mooning sincerity at first captivate Grace, but then threaten to strangle the life out of her.

Tom is the sort who regularly calls town meetings to upbraid the community on their wavering values, and when Grace falls into his lap, he sees an opportunity to help the townsfolk become better, more caring people. The road to hell apparently really is paved with good intentions. Grace is unconvinced, and doesn’t expect to be sheltered here; in a clear expression of her, and the townspeople's, utilitarianism, she wonders what she has to offer them, and what the townspeople have to gain by taking her in. This is our first clue as to the film’s intentions. While set in Depression era small town USA, von Trier aims at making a broader statement about the Northern European utilitarian traditions that value people according to their work ethic and productivity. Simply put, if Grace can be of no practical use, if she's more trouble than she's worth, she will not be encouraged to stay. Grace’s first hiding place, the old abandoned mine shaft, has carved over the entrance what could very well be the town's motto "dictum ac factum" (no sooner said than done). We are the what we produce. No lollygaging in Dogville, missy, so what do you bring to the game?

At first, even though Grace offers her services, everyone claims that while their neighbour might need some help, well, I'm all right Jack. The worm soon turns, however, and the townsfolk, as if they are masters handing down favours to their field slaves, begin to assign Grace chores "for her own good, not theirs." We are asked to consider if personal redemption can be found through selfless works. Can Grace bring the community of Dogville what her name promises? Will her willing subjugation to the community’s wishes help them overcome their innate viciousness? By placing herself at the mercy of the community, repudiating her very self in order to fit in will Grace find acceptance and happiness through such complete ontological sacrifice? Her stoic acceptance of all abuse, her enduring work ethic, has more than a whiff of Calvinism about it.

Over the course of the summer, Grace "bears her neck" to the townspeople of Dogville (the imagery is purposefully and recurrently animalistic), and while she is at first accepted by the town, and even loved by the dutiful Tom, the citizens eventually grow to resent her for her subservient, selfless stoicism. Given the opportunity, you sense they’ll turn on her like a pack of hounds. Grace is, as Ben puts it (in a totally different context) "a good thing in a bad place."

The townspeople, it becomes clear, are damaged souls. McKay (Ben Gazzara) is blind, but talks wondrously of the way the light strikes a building. He rarely leaves his shrouded house, but talks of far away lands. Chuck (Stellan Skarsgård) talks of being vigilant against wickedness, but is one of the first to transgress the bounds of civility with Grace. While Grace maintains that Dogville is a beautiful little town amidst beautiful mountains where people have hopes and dreams, Chuck counters that the town is rotten from the inside out. Well, he oughta know. And the grimy and disheveled Ben defends the freighting industry like it defines his life, but suffers terrible guilt for his weekly visits to the cat house, plus he fails, as a sort of modern Charon, to ferry the most important package of his life across the metaphorical Stygian River.

For such a spare production—the stage on which the events play out is very theatrical, with chalk lines indicating walls, doors and windows, a few spare pieces of furniture and bare trees marking the only three dimensional objects in this too-flat world--this is a remarkably dense story. While we in the audience can, like voyeurs or government agents, see right into everyone’s lives--even Tom claims he can see right through everyone, except Grace--the truth of the story, like Grace's dark past, lies hidden from sight until we approach the film's third act.

Von Trier makes some very telling comments about the fundamental cruelty at the core of most human societies. In order to form a larger society, we seem doomed to obliterate the individual. The exclusionary nature of society is a primal force, and von Trier seems to be suggesting that this sort of xenophobic ostracism of the outsider has been around far longer than organized religion (Dogsville, remember, has no preacher.) Yet, story clearly has a Biblical element, given the names of Grace and Moses (the town dog—who, like everyone else in town, hates strangers), and the decision by Grace to try to find sanctuary through sacrifice. Likewise, the language occasionally suggests some Old Testament thinking, such as when Tom proclaims that if after two weeks of getting to know Grace even one man cries out "begone" he will send Grace packing himself. There’s a reason the dog’s name is Moses. We’re not in the redemptive land of Bethlehem anymore, Toto.

Dogville also makes stark commentary on the nature of violence in society, as it examines how we tend to, when challenged or violated, turn the gun sidewise on fellow sufferers. The townspeople of Dogsville have very little to call their own, but are quick to take advantage of and eventually cruelly assault Grace. Why? Because they can; she is even weaker than they are. When you base a social order around suffering, when you isolate and exclude the not-us pariah in your midst, and reinforce it with a economic system that insures such divisions endure, marginalize people, then kick the shit out of them when they’re down, how can you expect people to be anything BUT unpleasant? It isn’t a giant leap to see von Trier finger-wagging at what seems to be the innate right of all Americans to wreak holy vengeance on those who have wronged them. Here he will score all sorts of political points with those of us convinced the Dubya’s approach to global and domestic conflicts is just a tad apocalyptic.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program. Folks begin to ask more and more of Grace, as if she owes them for being their servant, until Grace gives just about everything that she has to give. While Tom claims to love her, he seems remarkably ineffectual trying to help her. She is more of an ideal than a person, a lesson to illustrate his personal philosophies, a character to populate his novel, rather than an actual human being to love. He is soon a doubting Thomas, unable to believe in the love he has proclaimed as the pressure from the town to get rid of Grace grows stronger than his will to resist. Allegiance to the community overrides petty personal concerns like love for another. When the townspeople turn on Grace, blaming the victim in an all-too familiar scenario, and the film toils towards its unforgettable climax, Grace drags her burden around town like a modern day Sisyphus or Atlas, uncomplaining, unbowed. At this point we could be forgiven for sensing the long shadows of Breaking the Waves or Dancer in the Dark cast over the film, but von Trier has something else planned for us. I must admit that I was caught completely off guard by the film’s final moments; they hit me like a short sharp chop to my soft and dangly bits.

The concluding scenes play out like a truly demented inversion of Biblical mercy. James Caan appears as Grace’s mobster father; Caan is an iconic gangster figure, and seems like a good choice here. He counsels Grace on the basic cruelty of all people, who are no better than dogs. They need to be trained and punished when they’ve transgressed, otherwise they’ll never learn. Grace argues that forgiveness is key; dogs cannot control their dog-like nature, so why not simply let them be, and accept them, fleas and all. It’s a terrific bit of stage business, as it seems that we’re listening in on a conversation between a wrathful Old Testament God and a forgiving New Testament Jesus. Who will win determines the fate of every single soul in that small Rocky Mountain town. It is powerful, riveting filmmaking; this sequence exemplifies why Dogville is a work of Great Art.

SUPER DUPER SPOILER ALERT. DON’T BLAME ME IF I SPOIL THE WHOLE FUCKING MOVIE FOR YOU. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED, ASSHOLE! As the film wrapped up, I was reminded of Shirley Jackson's great short story "The Lottery;" if Tessie had had a tommie gun hidden under her skirts, that is. Von Trier reveals the essential frailty of humanity so starkly, as we witness how the thin veneer of civilized behaviour--the kindness, forgiveness and Grace that a more religious person might be tempted to call "New Testament thinking," is so easily scraped away to reveal the vengeful cruelty, or "Old Testament thinking," beneath. While I never once felt like I was being lectured, this film provided a striking and instructive cinematic revelation of the costs of the degradation of humanity.

The film’s end is a litmus test. We can gauge audience member’s values by their reaction to the film’s final revelatory moments. Adding a final layer of indictment atop the film’s attack on an already lengthy list of human offenses we are asked to consider this: When Grace exacts her final revenge, what exactly do we feel, horror or satisfaction? Provocatively, while that query is hanging off the tip of the narrator’s tongue, he wisely leaves the question a-begging.

Score: 94/100

Elephant (USA, 2003, Van Sant) AKA Life is Like a Box of Rancid Chocolates

Purportedly inspired by the Columbine massacre, and borrowing its title from the Hindu fable about a group of blind men who believe they know the true nature of an elephant, but are really only able to describe the one part that they are touching, van Sant’s film feels similarly disjointed and inconclusive. As he skips from one student to the next in a series of apparently unrelated minor episodes, making no attempt to draw them together into a cohesive narrative, it’s clear that van Sant’s intent is to build a mood, not a traditional narrative.

Harris Savides cinematography is award-worthy—his fluid camera and distinctive shot compositions are by far the most outstanding aspect of this troubling film. F’rinstance, the way he shoots the killers emerging out of the distance as if they were Spielbergian ETs from Close Encounters or AI is chillingly effective. He and van Sant, who also edited the film, clearly have established a strong rapport over the years; recently, their work on Gerry was equally as remarkable. They even found some of those same angry clouds! The aural landscape is thoroughly disturbing: listen to the cacophony in the cafeteria as one of the killer’s scopes out his future killing ground. The lad’s claustrophobia and disorientation is palpable, and conveyed almost exclusively through the use of sound.

Metias Mesa’s work on the Steadicam is worthy of mention. Elephant has the longest tracking shots I’ve seen since the Mother of All Tracking Shots, Russian Ark, and like the Sokurov film, they create a dreamlike effect, or more accurately, a hypnotic effect, drawing us into a trance as we float through the hallways just as many of the students at the anonymous high school. But is this enough, simply to evoke a mood and mirror the numbness of the victims when dealing with this sort of cultural flashpoint?

From the moment we spot the kids in camouflage fatigues, there’s that awful sense of foreboding. It’s like counting down as you wait for the proverbial Hitchcockian ticking time bomb to explode. Predictably, it is life’s victims who get victimized first—the dorky girl, the guy who’d been discussing homosexuality in class—and this is about the only really telling comment that van Sant makes during the carnage. Otherwise, he’s content to build ambience and document the violence.

While they may have been introduced to add a layer of veracity to the film, the use of amateurs is a gimmick that doesn’t really pay off. Many of the actors seem self-conscious, posing and posturing, or spending a bit too much energy trying to avoid looking at the camera. Van Sant also litters the stage with some unnecessary cliches, such as the trio of vacuous bulimics, who evoked laughter from the audience I was with (they ate, what, two pieces of lettuce apiece for lunch; what exactly were they purging in those stalls?) at a most uncomfortable moment during the shootings. This isn’t like the sort of comic relief you’ll find in a Shakespearean tragedy; it’s simply grotesque and cruel.

Now, I’ll be the first to agree that there’s no rush to judgement here, as the killers don’t seem all that much different from anyone else in the school. Indeed, one of them plays a passable Fur Elisse and even quotes Macbeth during the slaughter, but there’s also not really a rush to make any substantial point, I’m afraid. Now, I don’t normally demand that a film deliver a message, but if you set yourself up to capture a specific and potent moment in history like this, you’d better be sure you have something more profound to offer up than Shit Happens.

Thanks Forrest. Pass the chocolates.

Score: 59/100

My Walk in the Park: An Allegory

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth"
--Mark Twain

I’ve noticed that a lot of folks who fire up weblogs feel the need to rationalize their site’s existence. The eternal questions, like "Why am I here", and "Why should you give a damn?" seem to weight heavily, so Allah Be Praised and God Bless ‘em, these individuals offer up mission statements that aim to clarify who they are and what they’re up to. I’m not mocking or complaining; in fact, I generally enjoy reading these sorts of things, because they give me a little bit of a hook onto which I can hang the material that I pluck from their pages, and allow me to attempt some sorta integration, philosophically or aesthetically, of the writing I encounter. I’d like to think that simply quoting Mark Twain would be enough, but why not put a little more of myself into it, says I; what follows is my attempt to defend my hope that you’ll invest your valuable time by sharing some of it with me here. Time is key, for as Alexander Pope said, "Some people will never learn anything…because they understand everything too soon."

My house abuts against Thetis Lake Park, which affords me daily walks with my beloved, if slightly brain-addled, dog Molly. This is a lovely little park that boasts a network of trails that crisscross each other, weaving a tapestry of opportunity to check out nature in all her bounty. There are so many trails that, if you enter the park with an open mind and an ounce or two of spontaneity in your blood, there’s no reason you should ever have the same walk twice.

Of course, the first few times I ventured into the park, I stuck to the established park-cut trails, playing it safe until I got my bearings. Soon, though, I was forking off into lesser used paths, because that’s where you’ll find more interesting things; this is where I hope to really discover what’s distinctive about the parkland. Some of these smaller trails are official, with names and trail markers and all that, while others are made by saps like me who simply veer off into the woods on some sort of Robert Frostian road less traveled whim.

Now, I’m no Wordsworth or Keats, seeking refuge from man’s evil world or a clearer understanding of life’s complex truths through a closer relationship with nature, but I do have every intention of using these walks to soak up all that the great outdoors has to offer and reconnect with that low-humming vibe that is the Life Force coursing through all of our beings, but the reality is I spend most of my time thinking about other things. Molly (my dog, remember?) though, is in the Zen of the Moment pretty much every second she’s with me on these explorations. She is not, however, exactly the model of efficiency—for every single kilometre I travel, she probably covers ten. While I can, if the mood strikes me, ruminate on the way a bit of light strikes a leaf, she’s bounding hither and yon, enjoying a sensual experience that’s almost certainly a thousand miles wider, but (one would hope) infinitely less deep. Is she, in her complete lack of self-awareness, more tuned into things than me, the completely and sometimes cripplingly self-conscious narrator of this tale? Is she more content, living every second of her existence this way, flinging herself over the nearest hillock in pursuit of the newest smell and the next fruitless squirrel hunt, than yours truly, who is often distracted from the light-on-a-leaf epiphanies not only by what’s happening now, but by what happened yesterday and what will happen tomorrow?

Probably. But then again, Molly can’t use a keyboard, or at least, if she could I feel pretty comfortable in the assumption that the best she could produce would look something like this: c.,mfl;;aui3jhg;,*^%$#(#K)*YU#K (and the latter only if she mastered the shift key) and since she’s been spayed, she probably doesn’t have anything particularly lasting to offer the world, so maybe, just maybe I have a leg up on her in that area at the very least. Also, when I go to bed each night I can smile smugly to myself in the knowledge that-- if the actuary tables are to be believed—the probability is that I’m going to outlive her by several decades.

So onward I travail. By following the most eccentric pathways I usually end up on a mildly pleasant if slightly predictable stroll that is indistinguishable from a dozen other strolls that I’ve taken over the years. But every once in awhile I find myself on a path that leads to some pretty interesting discoveries, like the time I stumbled across a tiny unmarked stream that fought its way through a rocky outcropping producing a beautiful miniature Niagara. The bonsai effect was stunning—like opening the doors leading out of the bloody carnage in The Inn of the Blue Leaves to find the serene vision of a Japanese garden in the snow in the final moments of Kill Bill Vol. 1 (sans Uma and Lucy, of course and unfortunately.)

Of course, there’ve been times when I’ve been forced to wonder what kind of dolt would craft a trail that cuts along a knife’s edge overhanging a cliff of Indiana Jones-like proportions? And I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t think about what would happen if I slipped. Like, what would Molly do? Would she attempt a Lassie-like rescue? Probably not—though that’s probably more to do with my own laziness with regards to her training than her own moral failure. More likely, she’d end up being immortalized in a future CSI episode about the dog who survived for a week in the wild by dining on the dead flesh of her clumsy master. But still and all, before I hoist myself onto some sort of higher moral ground, I have to ask myself what I’d do if the tables were turned. The fact that she’s only a mid-sized dog, and I’d only get a few good meals out of her plays little my belief that if dear old Molly met her mortal end on one of our hikes together, I’d surely hike out of the woods tell everyone that, while I fought heroically when we were attacked by wolverines, losses were incurred.

But back to the point, or what there is of one, almost always these deviations from the mainstream lead to a dead end, in which case logic dictates I oughta double back until I find a more established path. Of course, if we always followed such sage and safe advice, today there’d be no Northwest Passage to the Indies, would there? Instead, when I hit a dead end, particularly if the walk has been an interesting one, I like to carry it on just a little bit further, extend the trail as far as my limited talents as a hiker will allow me, and hope that others who happen upon the few meager bent twigs that mark my passage here will do the same.

Playing Some More Catch Up

The Good Thief (England, 2003, Neil Jordan) AKA Christ, You Know it Ain’t Easy

The Good Thief keeps most of the best of the original Bob le Flambeur (France, 1955, Jean-Pierre Melville), and tosses in a few curveballs, some which break nicely into the strike zone, while others bounce wildly in the dirt. In this British-helmed (Neil Jordan) and UK/French and Canadian financed remake of a French homage to American film noir, there’s something appealing about seeing Nick Nolte at the head of a multinational polyglot of thieves that includes Algerian, Bosnian, Russian, American and French, as well as a before-the-fall East German-looking transsexual Hedwig refugee, because you’re not only wondering how or if this Babel-like mix is going to pull it off, but whether or not Nolte will be able to hold it together for the duration.

And boy, does he. Nolte’s work as Bob the recovering heroine junkie and inveterate gambler is just great, combining that tortured, addict-type w/ a basic integrity and common decency that allows us to pull and fear for him throughout film. Bob’s fascination w/ prime numbers and love of Picasso exemplify his pursuit of the distinctive and lead him to take under his wing the exotic young beauty Anne (Nutsa Kukhianidze), who sure looks like she’s gonna be the genre’s traditional femme fatale. Jordan is really on his game here, using a good score, that includes some interesting north African techno music as well as the ever-urbane Lenny Cohen, plus showing off a nice eye for the setting’s seedier side of the Mediterranean which really enhances the whole film's noir-ish feel. The film's end may lack some of the ambiguous poetry of the original (Apollo review here), but Jordan makes up for it somewhat with a sweet romanticism and some droll humour. While there are a coupla doses too many of Bono doing "That’s Life" that only serve to accentuate the sometimes too-literalness of the marriage of song and image, and there is an unconvincing subplot involving Bob wannabe Paolo and the object of his affection Anna, which is both developed and resolved in a far more interesting manner in the original, there is much more to praise about The Good Thief than denigrate.

Score: 82/100