Okay, so I just saw Dogville and I am a little wary of commenting on it. But more on that later. For the moment, I’m just going to deal with my reaction to the film as it screened. So, just as the film was beginning, I was struck by the cold fear that I was entering a ‘pretension overload’ zone. However, I managed to get quite into it on a “I hate this town” and a “Leave Nicole alone, you jerks” basis, because my avid rage is a sucker for that whole “Blind Cruelty of the Powerful to the Powerless” thing, which is my fancy title for the whole “mob turns on the ‘weak’ and ignores its own behaviour and divests itself of any shame by locating the victim as the origin and bearer of all the incurred shame” thing. You dumbass mean jerks! I found the ending quite commensurate to the film. However, having just watched Apocalyspe Now yesterday, I was ready to crack up if they went anywhere near that whole Conrad “the horror, the horror” thing. I also liked that bit with James Caan when they’re debating Grace’s whole forgiveness thing and he says that she is not harsh on others for doing things for which she would judge herself harshly were she to do them. I felt ‘found out’ by that. And then I felt quite queasy because, well, how high school is that whole it’s speaking directly to my soul thing anyway? But then I remembered that I actually let myself off easy all the time, which nixed that whole found out and directly to my soul business. Hee hee. I finally used the word “nixed”. Mmmm, sophisticated. You see, I’m way beyond high school now. I’ve moved on to being dismissed as “undergraduate”. Anyway, so I sat through the film without much ‘critical’ consternation. I simply thought it a mean film, but quite good if you could embrace its aesthetic and ignore its ambition. But now, as time elapses, my feelings are growing progressively more negative and dismissive about it as an enterprise as a whole. Hence the wary. So now I am thinking, “what is prompting this reconsideration?” Mmmm. I think that it’s down simply to my reflecting on the film and re-evaluating it upon review, all while using independent thought. But I might be wrong. You can’t just take my word for it. There might be other factors influencing me. To be fair, there probably are. So now, in opposition to Dogville’s [I think] assertion of that whole ‘essential humanity irrespective of environmental factors’ thing, I will, in the interests of frankness, describe for you the post-movie environment I encountered so that you might be better able to discern from the totality of my film-going experience the answer to my whole “what is prompting this reconsideration” question, and thereby get a better read on the credibility of my eventual judgment of Dogville. So, the following are some of the post-film comments made by those with whom I saw it.

From Erin; “Aaaarrggh! Revolting and stupid!”, and “I want to go up there and burn the reel!”, and “Yeah, totally too thin. She looked like two sets of legs, with one set on top of the other”. From Leah; “Chapter details were a bit too cute. Narration was way too much. And the premise of Dogville as ‘a microcosm of essential humanity’, and the use of the town’s layout as a way of underscoring that flimsy point, is quite [personally/intellectually] offensive. You really can’t make a strong statement about ‘human nature’ if you assert that mythic ‘universal’ argument and ignore the effects of socio-economics and culture and the fact that people’s behaviour is arrived at in situe”. [I think, in this case, that those two are firmly in the David Stratton camp, viewing Lars von Trier as a “charlatan” who dresses up his films to fool and bamboozle “educated” viewers into liking them and thinking them rather smart] From Guy; “Um, was James Caan meant to be God?”, and, “Lauren Bacall is amazing”, followed by, “Hey! Lauren Bacall is a living legend, Elanor!”, even though, like, dude, she’s barely in the film, and she was in need of pore-refining cream, arright? And apologies to Marty for not having any quotable quotes. [Tsk tsk. If you will have other friends…]

So, these were strong opinions. Vehement dislike was expressed. So, I had to wonder, “what was up with that?” Thus, whereas before I hadn’t really considered forming much of a response to the film, these statements tipped me off that there might be more to look into about it. So I must own them as influential. They got me thinking.

And now, the thoughts. That whole ‘town stripped bare’ layout was problematic [you see? Sooo undergrad]. It was visually interesting, and I don’t think that it actually acted to erase the socio-economic aspect of the locality, but I think we can still put it down to mere trickery. It screamed “this should trigger thoughts about ‘getting down to the essentials’ which should lead you to think that ‘thematically’ this film concerns itself with bare and direct living”. It was also a cynical play for cred, because of that whole theatre-film high-low art opposition thing. You know, the subtle “Hey guys! It’s like a play!” was a mindset groomer [or ‘head-fuck’] which fed into “See how spare the set dressings are? Look how much you won’t be distracted from the performances and character interactions [a self-defeating argument, yes?] Look!” To which we chumps respond, “Oh look! Those actors who aren’t even in this scene are still performing their characters in the background! Wow! We go batshit over stuff like that!” Give me a break. But most heinous of all, the set provided far too much scope for mime. Unforgiveable. And I am cringing just at the thought of what the actors might be saying now about 'the process' and about it being so rare and cool to have so much rehearsal time, as in a play etc. Eeeww. I do, however, think that the film got the ‘precariousness of being indebted’ thing right. I could go with the whole ‘people get affronted and start the ingrate bashing, which then mutates into a license to get mean’ thing. What I now can’t go with, though, is what we’re supposed to accept as an inevitable symptom of the turn to meanness. Remarkably, until I actually thought about it, I didn’t realise how shitty all the raping was. You see, I had prior knowledge of the raping before going into the film, so I didn’t really think about it at all, but rather just waited for it to happen. However, now I’m like, “Hey yeah! What is with that old chestnut about males in their basest form being like, sexual aggressors, and shit?” All I’m saying is that rape is not necessarily the last logical step for guys who think that they are owed something from a girl who is poorly treated by everyone around her, and it’s kinda crappy to claim that actually, universally, it is. But I did think that the specific act of chaining her to a heavy object to prevent escape, and attaching a bell to her throat manacle so that her movement could be tracked, and then being able to view her with equanimity and a sense of 'right' as she struggled about, spoke quite powerfully of the extent to which the townsfolk had forgotten themselves and the gaze of others. Hmmmm. What else? Ah yes, it didn’t seem to go deep. Actually, it did seem to go deep, but that was the trickery talking. It didn’t hit you deep is what I mean. It triggered baleful glaring at certain characters in certain moments, but that doesn't count as profundity. But now I’m rethinking this again. Maybe that whole stylised thing without much profundity was good. Because, I did like how she just shut down as her ordeal progressed. I thought that loss of feeling quite true. So, why would anything really have to hit you, if the movie is working on the whole ‘banal brutal and short’ [I’m paraphrasing] mundanity and lack of profundity as its take on human life? Actually, now I’m thinking that if you consider the film within the frame of its constructions, it works. I said the ending was commensurate, didn’t I? Maybe it’s only when you remove the thing from it’s own universe that it shits, offends, annoys and affronts. But you can remove it if you wanna. There is definitely scope to take issue with the premise. And, taking issue with that tends to undo the whole film. Maybe I’ll do that later tonight, and then be all flipped back by tomorrow morning. Hmmmm. Don’t really know what to say, actually.