Daily Blague

So a movie in which a nice young girl with a "past" is abused by a small town in which she seeks refuge sounded like a bad call for Kathleen. It didn't sound like much fun to watch, either. Little did I know.

Lars von Trier, who made Dogville, and who was very arrogant about not ever having visited the United States before making a movie about it (so what; how many Hollywood "Gay Paree" movies are in pari delicto?) loves to deconstruct movies. There are no sets in Dogville, just a few props, and a chalked-out town plan. Some considerable sophistication has gone into the margins of the set, because they really don't exist: light and action just stop at the edge of the rectangle that serves as the town of Dogville. But I don't want to talk about the ingenuity of the film's production values. I want to talk about two performances and a story. What follows is a serious spoiler.

The beautiful character is Nicole Kidman, of course. She plays the role of Grace. We are set up to think that she's a gun moll trying to escape, somebody as dispensable as the Jennifer Tilley character in Bullets Over Broadway. And she's happy to yield to this identity. And yield and yield and yield. It's the idealistic character, her opposite number, who's the real fulcrum. His name is Thomas Edison, Jr, and the name couldn't be more ironic, because neither he nor his father has invented a thing (including thoughts). Tom, Jr (played horribly well by Paul Bettany), thanks to his father's having been a doctor, doesn't need to work, and is planning to be a great writer, although he has written nothing. Once you've been through the film you'll choke with affirmation at the things that narrator John Hurt has to say about Tom's writing career, which, so far, has involved, precisely, setting two words to paper.

When Grace tries to escape from her past - from whatever - it's Tom who decides to protect her. It's Tom who holds meetings to win the town over to shielding Grace from her would-be captors. But it is also Tom who goes along with the idea that, in exchange for the town's protection, Grace ought to do "physical labor" - something of which she has evidently had no experience - as a kind of repayment. Tom is soft tooth: your acuity as a dentist is measured by the speed with which you realize that his idealism is narcissistic buncome. For a long time, you think that Tom is clueless. Then you want him killed.

I'll say no more than that this is a film designed to oblige. Just when you're thinking that you can't stand any more of Nicole Kidman's dragging around a hugely heavy flywheel with a doorbell attached to her head, just when you've decided that her hopes that she'll be shot and killed while she's making love to the man of her dreams are perhaps optimistic, the production takes a turn for the nasty, and by "nasty" I have to include the character played by the former Mrs Cruise.

Is this an anti-American film? I'll have to take that up elsewhere. I was depressed by Dogville until the last chapter, when, with an insight only baby steps ahead of the movie itself, I suddenly grasped the ending. And the ending is played out with a luxurious ritard. It is anything but depressing. Vengeance is mine, saith Lars von Trier. Sorry, but wow.