Dogville

29 July 2022

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A remarkable parable about the failure of Christianity (cautiously, spoilers). It all starts with symbols. We're going to the dog city. The fact that his street is called Elm Street hints that nothing good can be expected. The main resident of the city for us will be Tom Edison – a barren writer, an unsuccessful preacher who always wants the best. It is he who hides in the city running from gangsters girl Grace – “mercy or grace”. What will happen will happen as a result of his actions. Tom gets a phone number from the main gangster, and a warning from Grace that he is very dangerous. Tom is working out a plan to get the people to agree to keep Grace in town. Grace begins to help everyone, acting on the principles of forgiveness and mercy. And it's going really well at first. Residents become easier, they become happier and more good-natured. They are coming to terms with what they once suffered and now celebrate the holidays. But happiness is fleeting. It is not without Tom's participation that the people begin to burden Grace, demanding more and the impossible from her. She responds with kindness and humility. As a result, she is finally turned into a labor and sexual slave, begin to hate and mock her. And if before the townspeople doubted whether to keep Grace, now they intend to keep her forever. But Tom intervenes, who loves Grace and tries, as usual, to lead people on the right path. At some point, Edison decides that Grace has become a hindrance to his work. He immediately turns Grace over to the gangster, forgetting the warning. Then it becomes clear that all of Tom's good intentions were dictated solely by self-care. Then comes the god, who ironically turns out to be Nietzschean (and seemingly dead). God reproaches Grace, who embodies Christian virtues, with arrogance. Grace moves to the position of god judge and arranges in Dogville Sodom and Gomorrah.

In other words, good cannot save the world. If you give people only good, it will not make them better. Rather, it will turn them into monsters and awaken in them all the most disgusting things. Here, Trier challenges the positions of various non-anti-evil lovers of mercy, like Tolstoy, regardless of whether the director himself shares this view. However, accusations of hatred of people are not justified. Critics forgot to pay attention to Grace’s words that soon people from a neighboring city will come here and take away the dog Moses. It seems that he will teach them simple commandments, and not mercy, in case anyone does not understand "this soul shall be cut off from my people."
For the concept itself, I would highly appreciate, but the visual implementation is depressing. Of course, the filmmaker is free to do whatever he wants. But the choice of visual means should reveal the idea, work on creating the appropriate effect. Here painted chalk bushes, non-existent walls and other attributes that bring the film closer to the theater, do not help. In my opinion, the implementation of the film in standard locations would be a more lively parable. All of the explanations I’ve seen about why the film is the best for the film are not convincing. As for me, Trier in Dogville is innovating for the sake of innovation itself: I’m going to shoot a rehearsal in which all the action and all the motivation will be told by a voiceover, and I will be applauded and praised. I'll save some money. No way. No production.

By the way, a similar topic about the failure of Christianity was developed by Luis Buñuel in his Viridians. The creators' conclusions are very similar. Unlimited mercy will lead sufferers to end up raped, literally. But there are two differences. First of all, Buñuel doesn’t have the eyes out of the production under the flag “I am so original and authorial”. Second, Buñuel has an opposition to the Christian ideal. In the choice between films, my sympathies are with Buñuel.

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30 October 2009

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The town lived quietly, did not bother, they played checkers with each other, arranged meetings and all the joys of ordinary everyday life. Yes, one day Tom Edison heard strange sounds, and he realized that these were shots, and a couple of minutes later a girl jumped out of nowhere, and behind her a car with gangsters, but he, of course, acted noblely and did not give it to them. And as a result, at a city-wide meeting, they decided that it was necessary to leave two girls for an educational period and make her work.

Dogville is a refuge and support for wanderers. Dogville is the embodiment of kindness and mercy, the manifestation of all the best human qualities. Dogville is hell on earth, the most terrible torture and torture. That’s the kind of feeling I had about this film, or rather the city represented in this film. But the most important thing is, of course, not in the plot, although it is also remarkable, but in the visualization of this film.

The film is amazing from the very first shot. It’s not even clear what’s going on right away, but when you slowly start figuring out what’s going on, the most beautiful side of the film is the scenery. The film is presented in the form of a model of the city itself, there are no walls and doors near the houses (although they exist for residents of the city). It feels like you are not watching a movie, but a performance in the theater. There's a storyteller, zero special effects, subtle, but piercing music, and always some special role. In this case, this is Nicole Kidman.
I used to call it The Others (also with Kidman, by the way) the most unusual movie, but that movie outperformed my sense of the effect of that movie. The feeling of viewing is completely untransmitted. It would be right if I called it, for myself, the most visually interesting film. Let’s get back to the female role.

I used to think Kidman was a bad actress and that her only outstanding role was in The Others. I take it back. I played this role very well, and it was European. There is little emotionality in films in the region, but Kidman... I also want to mention Paul Bettany, I first saw him in the movie “Games of the mind”, but here, of course, he did not show all that, but still without a good male role, a great film is not great. That’s just the male role is the weakest side of this film, but still, not bad.

In general, an amazing film, I have not been so surprised by films from a visual point of view. I thought that everything that can already be invented, but no, and this film is the brightest example of the fact that in every rule there are exceptions.

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30 October 2009

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The town lived quietly, did not bother, they played checkers with each other, arranged meetings and all the joys of ordinary everyday life. Yes, one day Tom Edison heard strange sounds, and he realized that these were shots, and a couple of minutes later a girl jumped out of nowhere, and behind her a car with gangsters, but he, of course, acted noblely and did not give it to them. And as a result, at a city-wide meeting, they decided that it was necessary to leave two girls for an educational period and make her work.

Dogville is a refuge and support for wanderers. Dogville is the embodiment of kindness and mercy, the manifestation of all the best human qualities. Dogville is hell on earth, the most terrible torture and torture. That’s the kind of feeling I had about this film, or rather the city represented in this film. But the most important thing is, of course, not in the plot, although it is also remarkable, but in the visualization of this film.

The film is amazing from the very first shot. It’s not even clear what’s going on right away, but when you slowly start figuring out what’s going on, the most beautiful side of the film is the scenery. The film is presented in the form of a model of the city itself, there are no walls and doors near the houses (although they exist for residents of the city). It feels like you are not watching a movie, but a performance in the theater. There's a storyteller, zero special effects, subtle, but piercing music, and always some special role. In this case, this is Nicole Kidman.
I used to call it The Others (also with Kidman, by the way) the most unusual movie, but that movie outperformed my sense of the effect of that movie. The feeling of viewing is completely untransmitted. It would be right if I called it, for myself, the most visually interesting film. Let’s get back to the female role.

I used to think Kidman was a bad actress and that her only outstanding role was in The Others. I take it back. I played this role very well, and it was European. There is little emotionality in films in the region, but Kidman... I also want to mention Paul Bettany, I first saw him in the movie “Games of the mind”, but here, of course, he did not show all that, but still without a good male role, a great film is not great. That’s just the male role is the weakest side of this film, but still, not bad.

In general, an amazing film, I have not been so surprised by films from a visual point of view. I thought that everything that can already be invented, but no, and this film is the brightest example of the fact that in every rule there are exceptions.

Original

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04 February 2009

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No greasy shape and dizzying special effects. Only the naked essence.

What happens if you ignore the animal in man?
What will happen if you oppose the natural laws of nature?
What happens if you give a man power for which he is not ready?

In this film, there are no positive characters who carry the truth in the last resort, no chewed answers and no ready-made morality.
There is a very clear and multifaceted example.

Thank you so much to the audience.

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31 December 2022

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I don't believe it. False from beginning to end, and not only because of the incredible cruelty shown and the lack of scenery. The chosen visual style is not just bad - it is squalor, children play in the sandbox, it is a direct mockery of the viewer, leaving only one question: "Why didn't bandits give sticks instead of weapons?" Everything about the visual, the director fully described himself.

Every scene, every character, every situation is unbelievable. At the beginning, the viewer should think that the heroine is fleeing from mortal danger, has nothing, is absolutely defenseless and without rights, on which the whole further circus of her humiliation is built, but the twist at the end shows that she is a princess of the underworld who fought only for independence from her father and her pride. And now let us ask ourselves – and a person who fights for pride of his own free will, will tolerate bowing, blackmail, public humiliation, collar and rape? The fact that a woman who has never worked in her life, who lived in luxury, decided to run away from her mafia father to prove something to him is already romantic. But the author tries to convince the viewer that there can be a woman of such incredible ideals that she will allow the whole village to rape herself, showing Tolstoy’s non-resistance to evil. The director has never spoken to a rape survivor, he doesn’t know what he’s going to talk about. This jester believes that when a woman is alternately raped by a person of 7 throughout the year, it causes her only fatigue and philosophical sadness.

The biggest problem with the film is that it has a middle ground between the beginning and the end. The director said he wanted to show how easily evil can be born anywhere, even in the harmless American outback. But in this case, he had the task to show exactly how this happens, i.e. there must be good work with psychology, arches of characters that lead them to absolute corruption. Instead, the middle between the idyllic town and hell on earth is filled with Occasional bad deeds that the characters start doing just because the script. Suddenly, a masochistic child appears. I don't. Yes, half of children are sadistic, but they are not masochists, children are very afraid of pain. The owner of the flower bed suddenly forbids Grace to walk on the track because the script. Grace for some reason are very expensive figurines, these are not some figurines from her childhood, she has nothing to do with them, these are trinkets. People who wanted to kick Grace out suddenly want to keep her. Is it about $10? Let it be 150 in terms of modern ones, but this is still not the reason. They wanted to kick her out of fear of the police and bandits, but suddenly they wanted to risk it for nothing.

Yes, in the end, the heroine executes the offenders, and this gives the viewer a rare sense of satisfaction from the fact that the film ended exactly as I wanted, and not some puffed up pathetic forgiveness, but even in this the heroine behaves inadequately. Because there was at least one person in the village who had done nothing to her: a baby in a cradle. And am I supposed to believe that a woman who took on the role of a martyr for a whole year personally ordered the execution of even this child?

As a result, the author chose a very dubious idea and the worst way to implement it on the screen, and he could not prove his thesis absolutely.

The continuation of "Manderley" with other actors is slightly more adequate, there, with the same bloating, at least there is some internal logic of what is happening. She just isn't here.

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