Dogville

I wasn’t particularly eager to jump on Dogville, given that a 3 hour film set in one small set that follows the dogma 95 thing and its directed by a director that I’m not particularly fond of (after attempting to attempting to watch The House that Jack Built and not getting past the first hour) wasn’t quite exciting for me. however I still had to give it a shot, and thank god I did, because this is nothing short of extraordinary. Dogville could’ve been a play, sure, but I think the fact that Lars Von Trier has all these limitations that seem ridiculous at first proves that he is sort of a genius for making you to a certain degree ignore it in order to pay attention to the quite amazing story. despite the films best efforts to suck you out by adding title cards that explain what’s going to happen in the next half hour and having actors open imaginary doors in imaginary houses divided by chalk, Dogville’s story is so fantastic that it drags you in and doesn’t let you go. there are a lot of themes at play that I’m not even gonna bother to explain because im sure a better reviewer could explain in a better way than I could, but it’s pretty apparent that Von Trier has a quite pessimistic outlook on life. from the disgusting Chuck (Skasgård), to the “all knowing” Tom (Bettany), to the poor, poor Grace (Kidman), we are all rotten to the core. it’s all so masterfully done by a excellent handling of the tone, because this movie goes from wholesome to painful and disgusting in just a couple chapters. I think Dogville is a masterclass on great acting, writing and even directing, because you get lost in the story of this awful town and in the characters in it that you won’t notice the 3 hours. and maybe Von Trier has a point, because even though it was awful (and probably deserved tbh), I was cheering at the ending. and I know I’m not the only one.