Review of Dogville (2003) by Ramesh . — 28 Jul 2008

I generally avoid movies such as this because they are usually pretentious art films that try to be different just for the sake of being different. But Dogville was a very different experience that used it's unique style to it's advantage. The director is the creator of the famous Dogma93 movement and he applied elements of that style to film along with some other peculiar elements such as have bare minimum props. Instead of having actual items, he had chack outlines of the items with the names written inside of them. So for example, instead of having a tree or a wall, there is just the outlines of these set parts and the actors act as if the item exists.

Because of this the film feels like a play in many ways because it relies mostly on the story and the actors skills to entertain. With the movie stripped of all the extra elements I was very drawn into this deeply disturbing story about a small town that starts of show it's dark side when they find out that they have power over an another person. The whole movie was such a refreshing and satisfying experience that breaks the usual Hollywood norms without sacrificing any storytelling elements.