Review of Dogville (2003) by Matt H — 10 Aug 2010

A true masterpiece by one of the great directors of conteporary cinema, Dogville is Lars von Trier at his most minimalist, and the film demosntrates the manner in which direction and acting can drive a film in the absence of almost everything else.

To beging with, one should know that Dogville is shot on a sound stage, but a sound stage without any backgrounds. Dogville's setting features only chalk outlines of houses and streets and some basic props inside the houses.

On the one hand, Dogville does not conform to standards of Dogme95, but on another level it takes the principles of that movement to an even higher level. Instead of backgrounds, settings, props, etc.

, we merely see people interacting with one another in a story that is remiscent of existential fiction and drama, such as Kafka, Borges, Camus, Sartre, etc. Dogville is a deconstruction of the masks that we put on, a blazing critique of the U.

S.'s belief in the goodness of small-town America (from a man who never visisted America no less), and almost Nietzschean attack on traditional systems of ethics. Dogville's performances are brilliant and harrowing, and von Trier's direction is subtle yet evocative.

It is a film that strips away reality in order to explore the core of "the human." An staggeringly brilliant piece of cinema, Dogville is only the first part of a trilogy about the United States that Lars von Trier is still creating.