Philm | Dancer in the Dark | “In a musical, nothing dreadful ever happens...”

...except in Lars von Trier’s musical tragedy (2000). The “bad boy” of cinema, pulled off one of the most jarring genre juxtapositions in the history of film. The Icelandic singer/composer, Björk’s performance is a tour de force in this song and dance travesty of justice set in Washington State in 1964. (Von Trier fears flying so most of the film was shot in Sweden and Denmark, with a few outdoor scenes set in Sedro-Wooley, Arlington, and the Walla Walla State prison.) The film also stars Catherine Deneuve and Peter Stormare (coincidentally, Stormare was also in our last film selection, Birth).

Von Trier is notorious for pressing hard on his actors’ and audience’s sensitivities. His films attract some of the world’s finest talent because they will likely stand to be enduring provocations. Many of his leads chafe at the experience of working within his rules. He does not really want his actors to merely “act” or his audiences merely to be “entertained”: he at least wants the actors to perform traumatized and his audiences to be witnesses to trauma – not Hollywood style. (It may be asking too much to expect much more than that only some in the audience will walk out before the end.) You may not like the film but, if you can stand to sit through it, you won’t forget it.

His female leads are complex but “golden hearted” victims in three films, including The Idiots (Bodil Jørgensen) where the difference between the abled and the disabled is subverted, Breaking the Waves (Emily Watson) a dialectic between undying love and sexual debasement, and in this film, Dancer in the Dark (Björk)… which we discuss at this meeting.

Not all victims stay victims: how much abuse may a woman take and yet forgive? If God had sent his only begotten daughter, what would she have forgiven? – Dogville (Nicole Kidman) brutally asks.

In a later series of three films, women are used to probe depression via the banality of sex as in Nymphomaniac (Charlotte Gainsbourg), as oracles on how to face the end of the world in Melancholia (Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg), and The Antichrist (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe) where grief becomes demonic.

Von Trier’s films are deeply psychological and always morally challenging, at the bleeding edge of what can be imagined – as in the almost unwatchable The House that Jack Built (Matt Dillon), where serial murder figures in performance art and sculpture.

Though there are obvious political subtexts in Dancer in the Dark (as in Dogville) the anti-Americanism is a facile reaction. Von Trier’s cinematic provocation runs deeper recalling his fellow Dane, Soren Kierkegaard’s philosophy. Like SK, von Trier is obsessed with the necessary tension between the aesthetic, moral, and religious ways of being in the world.

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The film is in English. An unsubtitled version existed at Youtube but appears to have been taken down. A high resolution version of the film is here in English with Spanish subtitles. If you have trouble viewing it, let me know and I will send you a private link to a version on my server. Trailer.

Resources

Favorable:

• “Dancer in the Dark,” Daniel Kieckhefer, The Cinematograph.
• “Almost There: Björk in ‘Dancer in the Dark’,” Cláudio Alves. The Film Experience, 2021.

Critical:

• “Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark,” Dennis Cooper, ArtForum.

Analysis of von Trier and his films:

• “Lars von Trier: Making You Uncomfortable | Video Essay”
• “The Christ Figurine of Dogville,” Jürgen Pessoa, aporia, 2004.