This review was originally written in February. I was about to post it then, but just before I did, I made the mistake of reading repulsemonkey’s review, which blew this one away. He really got to the core of the problem of this film (and its director). Feeling quite inadequate, I decided not to post it. Well, today I was cleaning out my files, and after having come across this work-in-progress, I decided, what the hell?


The other night, I screened Dancer in the Dark at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A few weeks before the Oscars, every Academy Award-nominated film is shown in their theater, and Academy members get to view these nominees for their final voting. Guests (like me) get to come along for the ride. Best Original Song is the category in which Dancer in the Dark is nominated (the song is "I’ve Seen It All"). But this film has won all sorts of other awards, not the least of which is Cannes’ Palm d’Or. Crickey! Sometimes I give myself Golden Palm awards, but if I elaborated, we’d be talking about porn.

Yes, Dancer took the Palm d’Or, as well the top prize at the European Film Awards, among others, and lead actress/singer Björk, the world-famous Icelandic singer/musician has grabbed Best Actress prizes all over the place, including these aforementioned two. So, does Dancer in the Dark deserve this copious praise and recognition?


I don’t think so.

Dancer tells the sob story of Selma Yeskova (Björk), a young single mother/factory worker with a degenerative eye disease. Already, you can tell that this one’s gonna be a bowl of cherries. Anyway, Selma has a son, Gene, who’s destined to have the same disease that is just now taking over her life. Every penny she can save goes into a box, and one day, she’ll be able to afford an operation for her son so that he won’t have to suffer in the same way. Selma lives in a trailer, either somewhere in the Midwest or in Hell, on her rentor’s property. Bill and Linda (David Morse and Cara Seymour) rent this trailer to her, and they take care of Gene while Selma’s at work. They all have this weird friend Jeff (Peter Stormare). And, oh yeah, Selma’s closest friend and co-worker, Kathy, is played by Catherine Deneuve.

I’m not even gonna attempt to restrain myself from going into more detail about the plot, ‘cause I want you to hear this.

Bill, extremely depressed about the fact that his wife spends way more than he can earn as a local cop, betrays Selma by stealing that box full o’ money from her. It had $2,087.10 in it, or something like that. This is shown in the film’s only truly gripping scene: Bill, after having said goodnight, slyly shuts her front door without walking through it, in order to fake her out and surmise just how bad her eyesight is. He then sees where she hides her stash.

When she comes home from work the next day, it’s gone. When she confronts him later that night, he forces her to murder him, because he won’t give her back the money without cashing in on a free mercy killing (he’s was extremely depressed, remember?). So she kills him, takes the money and leaves. With what she has, she pays for her son’s operation in advance, and is soon picked up by the cops.

Her trial is a farce of manipulation and a poor, court-appointed defense (we never even see her lawyer do one single thing). Somehow, she’s cross-examined by opposing council without even having initially provided testimony under the guidance of her own attorney (I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve seen enough L.A. Law and Ally McBeal to know that this does not happen). She sits there and doesn’t put up a fight. She doesn’t defend herself. Why? Because of two ridiculous reasons.

One, Selma promised Bill she’d keep his secret (that he’s poor and extremely depressed). Why should she care about keeping the secret of a man who has betrayed and abused her so egregiously? Why does she worry about his secret after he’s forced her to become a murderer? Two, she didn’t want her son to know that he was destined to have eye problems, because knowing that the problem existed would make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. This came into play because if she testified that she kept cash in the house to save up for that operation, the court might understand that the money the prosecution claimed was Bill’s was in fact hers, and she was trying to regain what he had stolen from her. But instead, Selma allows the justice system to paint her as a thief and a cold-blooded murderer, which of course she is not. And by the way, Catherine Deneuve cries for her in the courtroom.

Off she goes to jail. This last act of the film drags interminably as she dismisses the options of a new trial (which would have been possible because of the court-appointed lack of defense), yells at Catherine Deneuve, and takes a long walk to the gallows.

Gallows, you ask? What about lethal injection? I forgot to mention, all of this takes place in 1960-something (I think). But the time doesn’t really matter.

And all of this, the whole film, is tied together with one common thread. Selma enjoys daydreaming musical numbers. Yup, if there’s something making a rhythm in the background, she’s happy to latch onto it and inflate it into a big MGM musical in her head, in an attempt to avoid her unhappy reality, be it the droning duties of a factory worker, the prosecution’s closing arguments, or her impending hanging.


And barely any of this works.

You know why? Because you don’t care about Selma! Lars Von Trier (whose name appears much grander than the film’s title on the title card, just like with novels), simply hates his audience. This film is an endless series of tests for us—it’s like he’s playing with us to see if we’re dumb enough to fall for this gag—dumb enough to actually feel anything for a character that so clearly hates herself. Why should we care about her if she doesn’t care about herself? I suppose this film might be effective if we had some stake in Selma, if we could find within us some real reason, supported by the film, to really care about the lead character. But alas, Von Trier doesn’t come close, if that’s what he was trying to do. Again, it really seems like all he was trying to do was torture us. I don’t care how cool some of the industrial music is if I’m praying for the lead girl to get squeezed in the hydraulic press like the Terminator.

By the way, Selma is supposed to be a Czech immigrant, yet Björk speaks in her strange, native Icelandic accent, and does nothing to attempt an Eastern European one. Why couldn’t they just make her an Icelandic immigrant? I half-expected Catherine Deneuve to yell, "Cut! Screw this, I’m off to make another feelm with Régis Wargnier."


Motion Blur

Despite doing everything it can to establish a look of realism, the director and cinematographer chose to do something that had me first raising my eyebrows, then squinting my eyes, wincing and almost puking. This film is very wide. You know how some movies are wider than TV, but not really wide? Saving Private Ryan was filmed in this semi-wide aspect ratio, which is 1.85:1. A really wide film like Raiders of the Lost Ark, however, has an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. And unfortunately for your eyes and mine, Dancer in the Dark, while filmed completely hand-held in digital video, is also v e r y w i d e. When the camera pans—and there isn’t a moment when the perpetual panning lets up—stuff that would normally be slightly blurry is extremely blurry. I don’t know much about deeply technical camera stuff, but I suspect it was the choice of using a digital video camera that exacerbated the blurring. I usually sit between eight and twelve rows back from the screen. On this night, I was in the ninth row, and wanted to move back into the high teens. That’s never happened to me before. Actually, come to think of it, I wanted to move 536 rows back, which would have assured that I’d have been in a different theater altogether.

And let’s be honest here. Hand-held does not automatically translate into realism. Unless you were running from the Blair Witch, excessively jerking motion is not how we really view the world. Depending on how bouncy you are when you walk, you might be able to split the difference between Steadicam and hand-held to duplicate our true reality. I think that filmmakers should make themselves aware that hand-held camerawork is not a shortcut to realism.


The Syndicate

Apparently, there’s some sort of consortium, some group to which director Von Trier belongs, who believes in making films more real by filming them hand-held and shooting in natural light without artificial lighting set-ups. This may be fine for them from a budget standpoint, but I can tell you that this will not be the "new direction for film," as some critics have stated. If so, then God help us all, because frankly, it looks like crap. For them to churn out films with this common philosophy seems silly to me; one should decide the look and tone of each single film individually.


Conclusions

I couldn’t wait for that warbling wuss to hang.


Rating

On the 7-point scale that’s preferred at most public executions (http://www.epinions.com/user-review-68ED-B482678-39E3C945-prod1), I give Dancer in the Dark a 1. Can’t get any lower. Even if I dislike a film, I’ll usually click "yes" on the recommend question, to encourage others to reach their own conclusions. Feel free to do so at your own risk, but I’m sorry—this time, I cannot say "yes."




Recommended:
No

Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age