Lars Von Trier
Dancer In The Dark

I've never seen a film review published on DeBaser, so I don't understand why there's a "film" option when asked "what am I reviewing," but in the end, I don't really care much; there's something I've been thinking about this masterpiece for a long time, and I want to say it.

"Dancer in the Dark," just to get ahead of myself, is a beautiful, intense, original, and heartbreaking film: it tells the very sad story of Selma, a Björk with very thick glasses but truly convincing, who is an immigrant with a young son working in a factory. This initial plot description already indicates that the film is not exactly lighthearted, but unfortunately, Lars von Trier wanted to add: that Selma is going blind, that she is unfairly fired from her job, that she is wrongfully arrested, that she is evicted from her home, that her son will also go blind. In short, what happiness.

Even though I generally love a whole different kind of film ("No, Mickey, you can't do this to me!","Nothing personal, Tom, it's business"), this "Dancer In The Dark" mesmerized me. Why? Because it's a musical (I hadn't told you this yet), and because its way of being a musical is light years away from the chicness of a "Footloose" or a "Chorus Line" or any other junk penned by Andrew Lloyd Weber (the king of '80s Hollywood musicals).
Selma is a factory worker who loves to wander with her mind driven by the noise of the factory, imagining songs and choreographies in her mind that materialize on the screen and make this film a musical, but when, after the splendid moment of imaginative leisure, reality returns, the impact is always traumatic; there's always someone scolding her for being distracted at work or for risking breaking the factory machines. There's no time to "dream."
This is the most original device of the film: the musical genre is no longer a synonym of stereotypical beauty and happiness (everyone loves each other, and when you least expect it, they start dancing happily for no reason), but this joy of dance and music is only in the protagonist's mind, reality is much, much harsher.
Once you understand this, it's evident that the plot is nothing more than a pretext: if what interests the director is highlighting the gap between the joy (fake and imagined of the choreography in Selma's head) and reality, raw and bare, it is functional to the film that reality is as terrible as possible. In other words, this film is beautiful but cunning, and now I'll try to explain why.

Von Trier, in my opinion, had this idea of contrasting the stereotypical happiness of the musical with a much less happy reality, and based on this, he developed the plot. To ensure that this contrast between imagined joy and real unhappiness succeeded, he needed the saddest possible plot. That's why Selma is an immigrant, is blind, loses her job, her money is stolen...because the protagonist must inevitably have a horrible life if you want to emphasize that, for her, happiness can only exist in imagination.
So Von Trier was brilliant in imagining such a heartbreaking plot, but precisely, he was brilliant from a strictly technical point of view, not artistic. It's as if Von Trier sat at a table and decided to make us cry: he had this idea of the contrast between musical and reality, and therefore needed the saddest possible story, and he wrote it...but this is not art, it's a technique, it's skillfully leading the viewer where you want them (in this case to tears), it's the "science of making people cry."

I didn't cry, but this film is truly moving; only, you have to digest it before understanding that there is no message, there is no sense in this film (not that films necessarily have to, but generally it's better when they do). In short, Lars Von Trier succeeded in moving us all, but that's precisely the point... he was good, but he wasn't "an artist."

Ps: I realize that in this review I've merely tried to express my own contemplation regarding this film, now I'll try to make up for it and give you some additional information, as a good De-reviewer: the film won the Cannes Palm (more than deservedly), Björk is simply wonderful and excellent also as an actress, and the music, of course, was made by her along with Deodato (who, for those who don't know, is great). The film's soundtrack is available under the title "Selma's Songs" and is, practically, another album that rightfully belongs in the Icelander's discography.