Review of Dancer in the Dark (2000) by Yuriati T — 08 Nov 2009

Dancer in the Dark is one of those movies that I totally understand why people hate, but I found brilliant. There's no doubt that Von Trier constructs Dancer as a sort of throwback to silent film melodrama - even as someone who loved the film, I can't argue that a story about a woman who is losing her eyesight and trying to raise money for her child isn't a little ridiculous and button pushing.

And, yes, like Breaking the Waves, Von Trier's plot seems to delight in taking a pure innocent and putting her through the wringer, pushing the audience to extreme places by means of the vicious and cruel world so clearly constructed by Von Trier.

And yet, I can't deny the effectiveness of it all. Von Trier's staging is brilliant throughout - I loved the transitions from the bland, dreary everyday world to the dazzling musicals in her mind (a transition that reminded me of Pennies from Heaven, a superb, if hard to take, film); I found myself pulling for the character as each new cruel twist unfolded; and the final scene absolutely devastated me.

Is Von Trier manipulating the audience, toying with them in an effort to get at their emotions? Without a doubt. And yet, far from the cheap sentimentality of so many bad Hollywood films, Von Trier's cinematic skills given Dancer a power that feels earned.

By the end, I found myself drained, but moved - after so many "ironic" dramas or movies afraid to be about something genuine, Dancer in the Dark plunges into a story about a mother who would sacrifice everything for her son, a woman who loves musicals and hates her life, and a world with a malevolent and sadistic sense of fate, and makes it all work.

It's not for all tastes, but I was blown away by it; even as haunting and brutal as it can be, it created a world I wish had gone on longer.