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Masterpiece or masquerade? Lars von Trier's digicam musical split the critics in two when it debuted at Cannes in 2000. There were those who saw it as a cynical shock-opera from a manipulative charlatan, others wept openly at its scenes of raw emotion and heart-rending intensity. There is, however, no in-between.
Dancer in the Dark is that rarest of creatures, a film that dares to push viewers to the limits of their feelings.
In her first and most probably last screen performance (she has foresworn acting after her bruising on-set rows with von Trier), brittle Icelandic chanteuse Björk plays Selma, a Czech immigrant living in a folksy American small town with her young son, Gene. Selma is going blind and so will Gene if she does not arrange an important operation for him. To cover the expense, Selma works every hour she can, cheating on her eye tests so she can keep working at the local factory long after her vision has become too unreliable to work safely. She sublets a house from a local cop, Bill (David Morse), and his wife, Linda (Cara Seymour). When nearly bankrupt Bill asks Selma for a loan, she refuses, but he later returns and steals the money, which she demands back in a furious confrontation. In the ensuing melee, Bill is fatally shot and Selma is arrested and put on trial. Will justice prevail?
Von Trier's passionate, provocative film runs all our emotional resources dry with suspense, giving us occasional flashes into Selma's gold heart and mind with superb song-and-dance numbers she conjures to banish the nightmare (Björk also wrote the score). At some two-and-a-half hours, it's not for lightweights, but anyone bored with today's smug, "ironic" cinema will relish this as an astonishing assault on the senses and a stark reminder of von Trier's uncompromising talent. --Damon Wise
The new Lars Von Trier film makes his previous efforts-"Breaking the Waves" and "The Idiots," for example-seem like models of orthodoxy and restraint. Shot in Sweden, it's set in America, or, at least, in an America of Von Trier's own devising. Most of the characters speak with foreign accents, and the heroine-a timid, bespectacled factory worker and single mother named Selma-is played by Björk, the Icelandic pop munchkin. Selma has a congenital eye disease, and she is saving up to pay for an operation for her young son, who will otherwise follow her into blindness. When the money is stolen by a neighbor (David Morse), a vengeful Selma quickly conquers her shyness with the help of a gun, and from there it is a short step to the courtroom and the gallows. The film is unashamedly two-toned, split between a granular authenticity and a stylized gaudiness. Every so often, Selma's predicament becomes so dire that the director decides to make a song and dance about it. The musical scenes-in the factory, on a railroad track, and so forth-have a deliberate, stamping awkwardness, overlaid with Björk's animal wailing. Since the movie showed at Cannes, many viewers have refused to stomach this unhealthy mixture, yet it feels laced with surprising power, and the harshness of the denouement is unfeigned. With Catherine Deneuve as a weary worker in a head scarf, something you don't see every day. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
