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Dancer in the Dark, 2000
Selma (Bjork) is a Czech immigrant in 1960s Washington, working in a factory to save up money for a critical eye operation for her son. While she is supported by her good friend Kathy (Catherine Deneuve) and wooed--sometimes a bit creepily--by a man named Jeff (Peter Stormare), Selma hides from everyone else the fact that she is slowly going blind as a result of a degenerative eye disease. When her landlord (David Morse) pulls her into his own domestic woes, things get very dicey for Selma. However, Selma spends half of her time living as if she is in a musical, to the extent that she frequently daydreams elaborate musical numbers about the events in her life.
Okay, slow clap/hat tip to whoever had the nerve to see that I was hoping for shorter, optimistic films, and decided to give me . . . . this. Honestly, it shows the kind of dark humor that is also at the root of the film.
Let's start with the positives. I friggin' love Bjork in every sense of the word--her music, her vibe, all of it. She is weird in a way that feels like it genuinely comes from her soul, and she is a perfect fit to play Selma so that it doesn't feel like a contrivance. Further, she really holds her own in the musical numbers (naturally), and she is a delight to watch. She also proves capable of delivering on the dramatic front, filtering tragedy through the lens of this character with such a skewed world view. Bjork brings her odd timing and rhythms to the music, which excellently matches the idea that this woman is out of step with the world around her. I loved a late in the film rendition of "My Favorite Things" in distinctly Bjork style.
At its best, the film is deliriously, darkly hilarious. Selma runs around like some sort of demented Amelie, only if Amelie existed in a world completely devoid of magic and whimsy. As the film progresses, Selma's quirks and the musical numbers take on an increasingly absurd element. It's one thing for her to tap her toes and dance around to the rhythmic sounds of a factory floor. It's quite another thing to flounce around in a literal life-or-death situation.
There's this nice counterbalance to Selma's subjective experience of the world, and that comes from the supporting characters. They are all really well-acted, and they both heighten the absurdity of Selma's actions/reactions and give this element of tragedy as they try to steer this person they love away from the cliff's edge. At times this gets a bit tenuous--and it's a good thing that the setting is in an older decade--because Selma seems at times to maybe be actually seriously mentally ill.
On the downside, though, the film does start to feel a bit overlong, especially in the last act. There's this transition somewhere in the back half of the film where it feels less like the movie is observing a person make horrible, quirky choices and more like she is being intentionally put through the wringer in increasingly extreme ways. I get that this heightens the absurdity, but somewhere in the last third the effect that the film had been building suddenly plateaued for me. There are some interesting implications in the last third that the character might actually be really depressed and possibly might want to die, and I wish the movie had explored that a bit more. I also felt like, in wanting the character to make the worst choices possible, the film sometimes stepped out of its own internal logic. For example, there are times that Selma withholds information and it makes sense, but later she does so and it's like . . . what? Or times when she resists help or support from others that just doesn't seem to gel with her fantasy reality where everyone is nice to each other. This is where you start to feel the hand of the writer, and I got a lot less interested when it began to feel mechanical and manipulated instead of "naturally" ridiculous.
Style-wise, I thought it was interesting to see Von Trier's style intersect with filming musical numbers. Also, this is the second film in a row to have Joel Grey in a role. Also, loved seeing Udo Kier as the eye surgeon because, you know, RUN!!!!
I wish that the second half had matched the tone and pace of the first half. I get that stretching everything out is part of the joke of the arc of the character (and even more darkly, that it kind of puts the viewer on the position of being like
but with 40 minutes to go I found myself mostly feeling annoyance instead of either sadness or humor.
Dancer in the Dark, 2000
Selma (Bjork) is a Czech immigrant in 1960s Washington, working in a factory to save up money for a critical eye operation for her son. While she is supported by her good friend Kathy (Catherine Deneuve) and wooed--sometimes a bit creepily--by a man named Jeff (Peter Stormare), Selma hides from everyone else the fact that she is slowly going blind as a result of a degenerative eye disease. When her landlord (David Morse) pulls her into his own domestic woes, things get very dicey for Selma. However, Selma spends half of her time living as if she is in a musical, to the extent that she frequently daydreams elaborate musical numbers about the events in her life.
Okay, slow clap/hat tip to whoever had the nerve to see that I was hoping for shorter, optimistic films, and decided to give me . . . . this. Honestly, it shows the kind of dark humor that is also at the root of the film.
Let's start with the positives. I friggin' love Bjork in every sense of the word--her music, her vibe, all of it. She is weird in a way that feels like it genuinely comes from her soul, and she is a perfect fit to play Selma so that it doesn't feel like a contrivance. Further, she really holds her own in the musical numbers (naturally), and she is a delight to watch. She also proves capable of delivering on the dramatic front, filtering tragedy through the lens of this character with such a skewed world view. Bjork brings her odd timing and rhythms to the music, which excellently matches the idea that this woman is out of step with the world around her. I loved a late in the film rendition of "My Favorite Things" in distinctly Bjork style.
At its best, the film is deliriously, darkly hilarious. Selma runs around like some sort of demented Amelie, only if Amelie existed in a world completely devoid of magic and whimsy. As the film progresses, Selma's quirks and the musical numbers take on an increasingly absurd element. It's one thing for her to tap her toes and dance around to the rhythmic sounds of a factory floor. It's quite another thing to flounce around in a literal life-or-death situation.
There's this nice counterbalance to Selma's subjective experience of the world, and that comes from the supporting characters. They are all really well-acted, and they both heighten the absurdity of Selma's actions/reactions and give this element of tragedy as they try to steer this person they love away from the cliff's edge. At times this gets a bit tenuous--and it's a good thing that the setting is in an older decade--because Selma seems at times to maybe be actually seriously mentally ill.
On the downside, though, the film does start to feel a bit overlong, especially in the last act. There's this transition somewhere in the back half of the film where it feels less like the movie is observing a person make horrible, quirky choices and more like she is being intentionally put through the wringer in increasingly extreme ways. I get that this heightens the absurdity, but somewhere in the last third the effect that the film had been building suddenly plateaued for me. There are some interesting implications in the last third that the character might actually be really depressed and possibly might want to die, and I wish the movie had explored that a bit more. I also felt like, in wanting the character to make the worst choices possible, the film sometimes stepped out of its own internal logic. For example, there are times that Selma withholds information and it makes sense, but later she does so and it's like . . . what? Or times when she resists help or support from others that just doesn't seem to gel with her fantasy reality where everyone is nice to each other. This is where you start to feel the hand of the writer, and I got a lot less interested when it began to feel mechanical and manipulated instead of "naturally" ridiculous.
Style-wise, I thought it was interesting to see Von Trier's style intersect with filming musical numbers. Also, this is the second film in a row to have Joel Grey in a role. Also, loved seeing Udo Kier as the eye surgeon because, you know, RUN!!!!
I wish that the second half had matched the tone and pace of the first half. I get that stretching everything out is part of the joke of the arc of the character (and even more darkly, that it kind of puts the viewer on the position of being like