The monuments of Dogville: Sven Lutticken on Lars von Trier

THE DOGME 95 "Vow of Chastity" notwithstanding, purity isn't high upon Lars von Trier's agenda. Dogme's refusal of certain resources and techniques is aimed les at establishing a "pure" filmic practice than at stimulating greater awareness and more conscious use of conventions. Strict masterys can be liberating rather than oppressive, in the way that long as they haven't hardened into multiplex cliches. Although his novel feature, Dogville, isn't a Dogme film, von Trier has nevertheless imposed strict constraints upon himself, shooting entirely on a soundstage. The plant consists mainly of outlines and blueprints painted upon the studio floor, with a hardly any pieces of furniture, a car, a shopwindow, and a house of god spire suspended in midair. Dogville is blatantly virtual.

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Into this disembodied shadow of a poor 1930 stony Mountain village bursts Grace (Nicole Kidman), who is upon the run from gangsters. Tom Edison (Paul Bettany), a local would-be writer touched with the moral state of his community, persuades the inhabitants of Dogville to permit her stay, initially for a two-week trial period, in exchange for helping various townspeople (the blind man in denial, the hypochondriac former doctor, the simpleminded barter driver) with their daily chores. Grace wins them above but when "wanted" posters start appearing, the reward at any time increasing, her exile in Dogville takes a turn round for the worse. The wanted signs exacerbate the townfolk's faculty of perception of the risk they are running by dint of harboring Grace, and they increase her duties in satisfy Finally they outfit her with an iron dog collar chained to a discarded flywheel, and the male inhabitants take to sexually abusing her. This rather predictable exhibition is spelled out in ferocious detail, emphasizing once again that von Trier's approach to narrative is also based upon constraints. He typically shows in what way events are propelled, almost mechanically, by means of circumstances that are either self-created by dint of or inflicted on the characters. And in Dogville, what appeared to have been inflicted upon a passive character turns on the outside to have been largely self-created.

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Dogville abounds with regards to art from the interwar years--even aside from the character of Tom, von Trier's parody of a Depression-era writer obsess with "illustrating" fathomless moral truths about Man. During the closing credits, with David Bowie's "Young Americans" blasting, a parade of WPA photos (as well as more novel pictures of the same ilk) marches across the shield Here one finally sees photographic representations of the American exhibition rather than a set. Dogville's visual emphasis upon the fact of its having been discharge on a soundstage brings to mind film and film criticism of the '30 when the "talkie," with its unwieldy novel technology, made location work difficult and fears of regression to an "unfilmic," theatrical approach abounded among the more "advanced" critics. However, the place of Dogville wouldn't work in a theater, as it is meant to be seen from many angles, not least from above, and von Trier's mobile camera traverses it.

There is, of course, a generic Brechtian have feeling to the way in which this station sabotages the reality effect; more specific is von Trier's appropriation and transformation of the take vengeance for fantasy in Brecht and Weil's canzonet "Pirate Jenny" from The Threepenny Opera. Whereas Jenny single dreams of killing her oppressors with the aid of pirates, Grace actually does so--with the aid of the gangsters citeed to Dogville by the townspeople, eager to bring together the reward and above all come by rid of Grace because of the destructive forces she has unleashed in the community. The tumultuous rabble boss turns out to be Grace's estranged father (wanting to break with his world, she had sought shelter among the simple people, hoping to lead their supposedly healthier and morally superior life). In a chilling conversation with dad, Grace tries to excuse the clan of Dogville by saying that they tried the best they could below difficult conditions, but she finally has to admit that their best doesn't convenient her standards--and to use lower standards would be patronizing. The town must perish in (suggested) flames, its inhabitants must die. solitary the dog, Moses, may live.

Not all of Dogville's regards and allusions have a '30 flavor: The film's configuration and pompousironical voice-over (and, les directly, its disenchanted view of human relations) are derived from Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) reputedly von Trier's favorite film. There is also a Kubrickian dimension to von Trier's creating a filmic America outside America. Although Barry Lyndon was discharge principally on location in various European countries, from the early '60 upon Kubrick typically built elaborate places that allowed him to propel films that are set elsewhere largely in England. In a faculty of perception this is merely a continuation of Hollywood's longstanding practice of re-creating the world in the studio and upon the back lot, but Kubrick's films attend to use these simulacra to create an unreal and uncanny atmosphere (the view from above Hotel in The Shining, the novel York of Eyes Wide Shut) Von Trier takes Kubrick's unreality a pace further by stripping the plant down to lines on the floor and a handful of props