Dogville (2003) by the director Lars Von Trier is an interesting mystery, crime and drama hybrid genre, with all sorts of enigmas going on, presented as a story book. It is split up into a prologue and nine chapters, with the narrator John Hurt, telling the audience the story in third person. Trier directed the film in a creative way, allowing the Hurt to describe the scenery to audience, as all they can see are the characters and a stage with a few props, where they must fill in the details of the setting with their imagination. With the street drawn out like a map on the stage, and the characters walking around the drawn-out blocks to present the buildings where they are supposed to be. The setting then leans on Hurt to describe the buildings, countryside and the setting itself, leaving the audience imagine what they think it should look like. I found this interesting, even when the snow was falling and there was destruction of the houses, the boxes drawn on the floor representing houses were not covered of snow while everywhere else was. The houses destroyed also adds more effect, as there is literally nothing of the houses left, no drawings on the stage, no props, no writing to tell the reader whose house is whose, emphasising how they have been destroyed. The use of the room that held the stage and film in was effective in representing time going by, with a white background as day and a black background for night, so the audience can have more of a picture in their mind of the time of when people go to bed or what they would be doing at the time of day.
Although, as the film proceeds, it follows with a lot of handheld shots, which was very noticeable, making the screen shake too much for the shot. I felt as though the camera shots were also poorly shot, as the camera angles did not flow continuously, where there would be a shot of Nicole Kidman (who acted Grace) and Paul Bettany (who acted Tom Edison) sitting together and then cuts to a shot of Bettany standing facing Kidman, excluding the action of him going from sitting to standing. This was not the only time that the shots were not continuous, but throughout the film with different characters.
Speaking of Kidman and Bettany, the relationship of their characters was naive as William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. As they carried on through the film, the character Tom, had an idea of ‘love’ when really, there was no attraction or a romantic feeling to it but looked at Tom’s desires. In fact, all the men seemed to turn their eyes towards the character Grace, as she was presented to be a sexual object. As the setting is cultural and historical, accents and costumes suggest this is set in USA, 1900’s, where the patriarchal society was in more control, the men in the town Dogville used Kidman’s character to their advantage. They blackmailed, sexually harassed her and wanted to fulfil their desires with her. Not to mention, Stellan Skarsgård’s character (Chuck) was exposed on the stage in front of everyone while sexually harassing Kidman, where there were no walls for the buildings. Impressively, the cast managed to avoid looking in the direction, which does lean more on the audience’s imagination as to what the other characters would see and be doing in their own houses, where they could not hear the crime being committed.
Forgetting that Bettany’s character was adding nothing but a false sense of romance to Kidman’s, Grace was an interesting character, where she left the questions running through the audience’s minds. How dangerous is she actually compared to what the posters say about her? What happened to her in the past? What did she do to get someone to shoot at her with a gun? We as the audience find a curiosity to Grace and find that we do not associate her as a sexual object but see her as a victim from gangsters and the town. I see her as a runaway, searching for jobs and someone trying to live in a ‘beautiful’ town. While the character Tom, is seen to be a constant reminder of how he attempts to be a provider to Grace as he gazes at her with sexual desire. This makes a binary opposite to the cliché of romance, instead of the woman being associated with belonging, it is Tom seen to be this association of romance.
The plot of Trier’s Dogville follows Kidman’s character with the members of the town, considering the dilemma of whether Grace should leave the town or be turned into the police for money. However, as the chapters go on, Grace sticks around trying to help the town with jobs and encounters a few conflicts with the locals. As the ending closes, the locals of the town find themselves with what they deserve, as they treated the outsider of their society with disrespect. As Kidman acts in the final chapter, it is obvious that Grace is broken from the behaviour of locals. However, when she returns to power, she finds herself judging whether she should give them the punishment they deserve or not. I found this to be an unexpected but satisfying, where there was the reflection of different characters and how they treated her. Like Vera’s children and the sentimental values of Graces figures, McKay and the curtains and Chuck with his view of the town. In fact, this was probably my favourite chapter overall, as you see the members of the town get what they deserve because of their actions and attitudes towards Grace, and no cliché of Tom uniting with Grace.
Overall, Lars Von Trier’s Dogville is intriguing with the narrative, although there are a few issues with the camera shots that were included and the use of Paul Bettany’s character compared to Nicole Kidman’s. The style of the narrative was in a book style but allowing the audience to see and imagine what is in the scene making it interesting for the audience to watch. There was the historical and cultural information within the text to include the desires of men towards women, making them victims. Finally, the text concludes with a judgement on behaviour towards people from outside their own society, which was built up through the chapters of the text.
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