Review of Manderlay (2005) by Dan M — 08 Sep 2009

No one can say this lives up to the standard of 'Dogville,' and like the characters in most of his scripts, Von Trier has only himself to blame. I personally know how it feels when, having accomplished something ambitious and audacious, you lack the same enthusiasm and drive when you set out to do it again, when you're no longer pushing established limits, merely revisiting familiar territory.

I'm fairly certain that's how Lars felt when he stepped onto one more chalk-lined sound stage to tell one more fable of American social philosophy, but I can't understand why a director that's so fond of reinventing himself is so keen on trilogies.

The resulting thoughtlessness and dearth of creativity is no more keenly sensed than the end credits, which present the same dark-side-of-America slideshow set to the same song as 'Dogville's' credit reel, only they swapped the photos out for new ones.

'Manderlay' is both more obvious and less coherent than its predecessor, its scope is narrower, it relies on contrivance to move the story forward, and nothing in it seems as natural as 'Dogville,' with its inescapably consistent emotional logic driving its characters to terrible yet unavoidable places.

The carefully measured storybook tone of the narration is somewhat degraded, and the quality of almost every element of the film, while certainly better than it could have been, seems to fall just short of sufficient.

The woeful moral of the story as intoned by the narrator, that black people are partially to blame for their social conditions (thank you, professor Von Trier) isn't remotely worth the effort of making or watching this film, and while I admire it for at least attempting to tackle race relations with no regard for normal comfort zones, it's a listless disappointment in comparison to the masterpiece of 'Dogville.

' Of course there's still a handful of things here to mull over and it's a true curiosity, but let's hope Lars can marshal a tad more energy for number 3.