Critics reviews

Lars von Trier's latest offering is not only an accomplished piece of storytelling, it is a film made as art, with things to say about the nature of the medium, and people unwilling to entertain such devices would be better to stay behind.

This complex relationship of the conditional and unconditional suggests that there is never a choice between modes of hospitality or forgiveness, that there is always a constant tension and negotiation between the two collapsible poles. If this is the case, is Grace's continual forgiveness truly unconditional? Could not Grace's infinite forgiveness of Dogville's conditional hospitality... also be considered a form of thematizing violence?

Von Trier's apparent renunciation of Dogme is both a good and a bad thing: Dogville's self-conscious and occasionally inspired theatricality reveals the movement's "vows" as the artistic handcuffs they were. Unfortunately, the film also offers a compelling example of the very danger that Dogme warned against, of placing artifice above truth.

Although we may cheer the movie’s evisceration of false modesty, rationalization, and deception, it will also leave many viewers feeling spattered with the rancid remains. Von Trier’s vision is amazingly thorough and exquisitely executed, but the audience may feel executed as well.

Say what you will about Lars von Trier—I won't deny that he can be an obnoxious self-promoter, and at times..., a bad director—but he absolutely does not unthinkingly mimic the hand-me-downs of artistic expression. Does this automatically ascend von Trier to the realm of political filmmaking? I still don't think so—there's too much shock-the-bourgeoisie silliness remaining in his creative instincts—but it does make him capable of producing some brilliant social commentary.

"Dogville" [is] a film that works as a demonstration of how a good idea can go wrong. There is potential in the concept of the film, but the execution had me tapping my wristwatch to see if it had stopped. Few people will enjoy seeing it once and, take it from one who knows, even fewer will want to see it a second time.

For all the plot detours and dead spots, this is strong, stinging filmmaking. Von Trier, light years from the formula doggerel at the multiplex, delivers something rare these days: a film of ideas.

What makes ''Dogville'' so fascinating, and so troubling, is the tension between the universal and the specific... The movie presents a curious blend of the alien and the familiar: it is a fantasy of America, but not an American fantasy.

This experimental drama about the cruelty of a Rocky Mountain community toward a woman (Nicole Kidman) in flight from gangsters, shot with an all-star cast on a mainly bare soundstage, bored me for most of its 178 minutes and then infuriated me with its cheap cynicism once it belatedly became interesting—which may be a tribute to writer-director Lars von Trier's gifts as a provocateur.

As a study in the social, psychological and philosophical dimensions of hypocrisy and intolerance, it pounds home its somewhat obvious points. As an exercise in Brechtian distanciation - there's a narration, with echoes of Thornton Wilder, beautifully intoned by John Hurt, and it's all shot in a studio empty of everything except a few basic props - it's gimmicky and never brought to a fruitful conclusion. And as drama it's repetitive and overlong.

Von Trier's elegantly angry Dogville, despite its predilection for audience-goosing, is an exhilarating pilgrimage into Darkest Human Nature: as emotionally exacting as we've come to expect from the director, and as primally insinuating as well. As a technical exercise, it's unimpeachable; each camera set-up, each metaphysical visual layer, each situational theater gambit validates the artform.

It's easy to see why the diagrammatic Dogville has been accused of anti-Americanism. But that’s to dangerously underplay the film’s European influences and its universal dissection of the human condition... In the end, Dogville is less anti-American than it is, quite simply, anti-oppression.