Danish filmmaker sticks to us – again
Published 9:00 pm Thursday, February 23, 2006
There he goes again. In an era when foreign films are supposedly becoming duller and more attuned to commercialism, Lars von Trier continues to go his own merry way, tossing brickbats and stink bombs wherever he pleases.
| Facinating: Lars von Trier’s sequel to “Dogville,” about a southern plantation where the black workers continue to be treated like slaves 70 years after the Civil War. Bryce Dallas Howard is uncanny as a white woman who decides to impose freedom on the workers, a situation von Trier treats as a metaphor for liberal do-gooding, colonialism, and nation-building and probably lots of other things.
Rated: R rating is for nudity, language, violence Now showing: Uptown |
His latest provocation is “Manderlay,” a sequel to his 2003 film “Dogville.” Both films are part of a projected trilogy (which may or may not be completed) which the Danish filmmaker calls “USA – Land of Opportunities.”
By the way, von Trier has never been to the United States. Well, no big deal, since his material could easily be about colonialist Europe or perhaps a fairy-tale land inside his own head.
“Dogville” was a three-hour movie about ignorance and intolerance in small-town Colorado, filmed on a bare stage with virtually no sets. It was like “Our Town” gone bad, with Nicole Kidman as a much-abused heroine who finally turns the tables.
Kidman has departed, but her character, Grace, remains at the center of “Manderlay.” Bryce Dallas Howard, the exciting star of “The Village,” replaces Kidman, bringing youth and a straight-ahead determination to the role. The style holds from “Dogville”: bare stage, a few props, black background. This one’s a mere 133 minutes long, however.
Traveling with her gangster father (Willem Dafoe), Grace takes over an Alabama plantation called Manderlay. It’s 1933, but Manderlay’s dying owner (Lauren Bacall) has been running the place as though slavery had never been abolished.
Appalled by the exploitation of the plantation’s black workers, Grace decides to move in and make sure that they will inherit Manderlay and profit from its cotton crop. She doesn’t ask the workers what they want.
What follows is a series of bizarre sequences detailing the planting and harvest season at the plantation. Grace wants to make amends for past sins, so she tells the white employees to wear blackface makeup when they serve dinner to the blacks – a gesture that freaks out everybody, white and black folks alike.
Grace also sets the now-rudderless workers on a program of improving themselves and the plantation by cutting down trees and building things. Which is a nice idea, except the trees protected the crops from dust storms. Well, she had good intentions.
“Manderlay” is something of a dark comedy about the catastrophe of good intentions. Von Trier may not be an expert on slavery or civil rights, but he knows all about idealism that shoots itself in the foot.
Von Trier always calls down a healthy amount of criticism, but he’s an equal opportunity offender. “Manderlay” takes aim at liberal do-gooding, but it also appears to be a metaphor for the U.S. government’s nation-building escapade in Iraq.
The cast includes Isaach de Bankole and Danny Glover, but the film is less an ensemble piece than “Dogville” (although some of that film’s cast, including Chloe Sevigny and Jeremy Davies, return here in tiny parts). This one revolves around fair-skinned, small-boned Bryce Dallas Howard, who is uncanny. At first she doesn’t seem to be acting, and this uninflected quality works really well for the nave character. This actress, the daughter of Ron Howard, has a gravity that seems absurd for her age.
“Dogville” and “Manderlay” are truly odd experiences, disembodied and sometimes contradictory. But Lars von Trier makes movies like nobody else. Oh, how I wish he would make a movie about his native country’s Mohammad cartoon controversy. But that’s probably too much to ask.
Bryce Dallas Howard stars in “Manderlay.”
