Thursday, September 17, 2009

They say it's the last song. They don't know us, you see. It's only the last song if we let it be.



Lars Von Trier's films have always provoked discussions. Critics call his work either pretentious or a masterpiece.

I manage to see Dancer in the Dark again. I still think of it as groundbreaking.

A. O. Scott of The New York Times: Lars von Trier's musical, shot in raw, jumpy digital video, is a fascinating exercise in brutality, mitigated by the otherworldy charisma (and the music) of the Icelandic pop star Bjork. As Selma, a Czech immigrant factory worker going blind in the early 1960's in Washington State (the film was shot in Sweden), Bjork seems to be inventing a whole new style of film acting, and her performance is miraculous. von Trier, continuing his campaign to rescue the art of film from complacency and convention, follows Selma's utter annihilation with sadistic relish. "Dancer in the Dark" is both stupefyingly bad and utterly overpowering; it can elicit, sometimes within a single scene, a gasp of rapture and a spasm of revulsion. Come to the theater prepared, with a handkerchief in one hand and a rotten tomato in the other.








1 comment:

  1. I still consider Dancer in the Dark a masterpiece but was disappointed with the Cannes jury of selecting it for Palme d' Or over Yang's Yi Yi: A One and A Two, a much superior work.

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