Here is another piece by our pal Ryan Hall.
Is Lars Von Trier’s Dogville really about America? Short answer: no. Long answer: Yes. It just depends on how many abstractions you want to allow this film before you feel comfortable swallowing the message. Dogville is an interesting experiment combining the anti-nationalist sentiments of Benedict Anderson and the forward thinking ideas of truth in art of Bertolt Brecht.
Lars Von Trier is not a director who flinches when it comes to difficult moral statements. In Dogville he lets his moral vision of the universe loose by not feeling confined to place his work in any sort of reality. Like the theater of Brecht, Von Trier wants his audience to be aware that they are watching a piece of fiction, it is only by removing the film from the tyranny of location can Von Trier get away with this movie. Dogville is the first of native Dutch Von Trier’s oft criticized “USA Trilogy” in which his films are made as “sermons to America’s sins and hypocrisies”. The films are a response to American filmmakers who make films about other countries without having visited them or even showing an attempt to understand them. The same accusation can be made of Von Trier, who due to an acute phobia of flying, will never visit the U.S. If we are watch Dogville as a parable of how America acts in the world how are we to interpret it? And who does this Lars Von Trier think he is?
The premise of Dogville works very much in its favor, shot on a huge blackened soundstage the fictional town of Dogville is represented by white lines denoting buildings, bushes, and roads. The actors, however, treat these boundaries with the same sense of tactile reality they would with any tangible door or boundary. Frequent overhead shots allow the audience to see the residents of Dogville going about their day-to-day lives unencumbered by roofs or walls. Dogville is set in a fictional town somewhere in the Rocky Mountains (actually it is Colorado, being from Littleton I noticed the nearest town was Louisville). The town of Dogville is far enough removed from society that it is sovereign only to itself and runs by its own moral code.
We can view Dogville on a surface level as a metaphor for what America is in the world. America, like Dogville, is a land of imaginary borders isolated from the major superpowers in Europe and Asia. Huddled masses from all over the world stream into America every year to find refuge from tyrants, oppression, starvation, etc.. According to our creed and philosophy we guarantee these refugees the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We ask that they contribute their fair share to keep America running, they are usually given low end manufacturing jobs that we as Americans have moved past. Looking at immigration en masse the only crimes we allow ourselves come from the crimes of common existence. We can overlook a little exploitation here and there when we look at the grandeur of America’s success.
Grace, the fictional every-woman in Von Trier’s trilogy, can be viewed as this eternal outsider to America. On the lam from the mob she is grateful for the townspeople for taking her in, she fully invests herself into the community by helping with the menial labor around the town. She eventually becomes fully integrated and invested in Dogville. Soon, however, once the citizens of Dogville discover that she has a past that is in her best interest not to divulge. At the revelation of this fact Grace pledges herself even more to Dogville and works herself to the bone for the townspeople. The citizens recognize a distinct advantage over her and their crimes of common existence become the much more odious ones of real exploitation. When this becomes too much for her to bear, Grace attempts to flea only to be held captive by the town she once felt a part of. Their dedication to openness and guaranteed rights fall as they essentially “rape” (about 6 times to be exact) Grace of her contract-given rights through humiliation and exploitation.
Grace becomes a scapegoat for everything that Dogville finds repulsive about itself. The unwelcome sexual advances of the men become her fault. Any modicum of shame at her mistreatment is lost in Dogville’s own sense of well being for at least giving her wages and a place to sleep. The citizens recall an imagined golden era before she arrived and polluted their once pristine town. During this time, Tom, the token liberal, stands by all the while clucking his tongue and shaking his head while explaining to Grace that she must endure these exploitations in order to rise above them by not sinking to their level. He excuses the townspeoples' true wickedness by explaining it away as a product of the contractual relationship of self government. Tom keeps his supposed moral high ground but never actually interferes for good in the behalf of Grace. In fact all of Tom’s backhanded preaching of tolerance and openness while choosing to ignore the true evilness of Dogville leads to the towns ultimate demise.
Perhaps Dogville isn’t so much a fictional America as it is a fictional Post-America. Perhaps Dogville is a film about America’s eventual demise by its inability to live up to the standards it espouses. If this is the case I am not sure I really want to know what Von Trier is saying when in it comes to the ending.
I don’t know if Von Trier intends for the end of Dogville to be a parable or a prophesy, all I know is that Von Trier believes America is going to reap what it sows. After Grace confronts the townspeople of their “sins and hypocrisies” and refuses Tom’s sexual advances, Dogville makes a fateful decision. They attempt to send Grace back to where she came from. What they don’t know is that Grace is a daughter of a powerful mob boss played by James Caan. When the gang arrives James Caan presents Grace with two options: either she leave with him and share his power or she lives with the citizens of Dogville. Their dialogue is the most illuminating section of the movie; Caan calls Grace “arrogant” for believing for one second that the citizens of Dogville warrant any type of mercy. He states that it is not only immoral but inhumane to the people of Dogville for her to show mercy to them when they showed her none. Based on her high moral standard if she did the same to them she would expect the highest degree of punishment for her crimes. She is arrogant by not holding the citizens of Dogville to her same standards and by doing so is allowing evil to continue by not meting out equal justice for the wrongs committed in a contractual relationship. The film ends in ballet of violence as the gangsters kill each of the town members, effectively wiping it from the face of the earth. Grace fires the last bullet into Tom’s head and leaves the smoldering town in ruins.
Wait, does that mean what I think it means? A violent uprising by America’s minority underclass? Wholesale invasion by another nation? Furious brow beating by a Danish filmmaker who has never been to America? I am glad that Von Trier situates Dogville so firmly in the realm of fiction, or else I would have to agree with my wife who immediately after the movie said, “that dude is a prick”.
-Ryan
Be sure to visit Ryan's most excellent music blog, http://tometotheweathermachine.blogspot.com/