Dancer in the Dark

source: Dancer in the Dark

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It's 1964 Washington State. Selma Ježková (Björk) and her son Gene are immigrants from Czechoslovakia. She's losing her eyesight and only her friend from the factory Kathy (Catherine Deneuve) notices. It's genetics and she's saving money to pay for surgery for Gene. She rents a trailer from policeman Bill Houston (David Morse) and his wife Linda (Cara Seymour). Her creeping blindness is causing problems at work as well as performing 'The Sound of Music' with the local theater group. This has the shaky Digital camera work of the documentary style. When Selma has her musical daydreams, the camera stops shaking and the lighting becomes brighter. I find the style a little tiresome after awhile and the running time is a little beyond my endurance. I do like Björk's quirky little performance. The music fits well with her and the story. I don't like the style but I really appreciate the attempt at something different.

As a fan of Lars Von Trier's earlier works, as well as Bjork's music videos, I was quite excited to see a collaboration between the two. I tried not to expect much, however, as many reviews of the film were quite poor. I couldn't have been more delighted by the film. Bjork's acting ability was superb (it is a shame she will not be acting in the future), and Lars Von Trier's writing and direction proved to be intense and incredible. While he played with different themes in the genres of the Musical, the Neo-Realist film, and the Melodrama, he created a meta film, investigating human nature as well as the nature of film (or digital video) itself. An incredibly emotional film, it also proved to be poignantly intellectual.

After 20 minutes I was nauseous and dizzy. The hand held video camera is brutal and relentless in its constant swaying, jerking and tilting. But since I'm a huge Bjork fan, I persevered. I tried focusing my eyes only on the center of the screen, but that was no help. Eventually I was reduced to staring at the seat in front of me while I listened to the dialogue. It was then that I realized that the dialogue itself was rather poorly written. So I had to ask myself: what the !@# am I doing sitting in a movie theater, staring at the back of a seat and listening to corny dialogue for 2 hrs? I'm not *that* much of a Bjork fan. I walked out at the half-hour mark, stumbled to my car and spent 10 minutes rubbing my eyes. Seriously, the movie itself may have been tolerable, but the jiggly camera is merciless. Please save yourself the optic nerve damage, unless you truly wish to be drawn into the realism of going blind yourself!

I see that I am in the minority in my "1 -- Perfectly Awful" vote on "Dancer in the Dark". That sure doesn't bother me! Yes the film was different, adventurous, startling -- and perfectly awful! For the first half-hour, or so, I found it at least intriguing. Even the factory dance scene was OK. Then David Morse pulled his little crime and the slippery slope down hill began. I found myself wondering how long this thing would go on, plus saying to myself -- "My God, are they going to have her sing on the gallows? Dance at the end of a rope?" I seem to recall a short-lived Bochco TV series called "Cop Rocks". It was admittedly worse than this film, but it was first by several years. Oh yes, a comment about the acting. What acting?

From Lars Von Trier with Björk in the lead role. This is the most boring movie I have ever seen: very bad and shaky direction from unbelievable angles, depressing story of an already worn out formula, the horrible music of Björk that every time there was a musical segment it felt like an endless torture, her totally insipid representation... I did not even regretted that she died at the end. Even more depressing is the fact that this is an idea of Lars Von Trier that I even had in some consideration but this is very amateur.

A flawed but rather wonderful movie about a young European girl in America (Bjork) who finds a fulfilling fantasy world in her music as she slowly goes blind. It comes as a shock to find this is a song and dance film but the audaciousness is breath-taking. Uplifting, unusual and not to be missed.

I saw this movie as part of ECU's "Butt-Numb-a-Thon Part Deux," a 24-hour movie marathon. And for the record, I actually do like Bjork, but MAN to me, this was top-to-bottom a perfect example of how to make an unwatchable movie. The performances were awful, the dialog tedious and laughable, the direction and patented shaky-cam camera work gave me a headache, the musical numbers and "choreography" painful to hear and watch. As a few other reviewers have said, it seems like every character in this movie behaves like a complete idiot, especially Bjork's character. This movie somehow defies the laws of time and space, because despite a running time of 140 minutes, it felt like it lasted about 5 hours. SPOILER ALERT***************** When Bjork's character was finally hung at the end, our audience actually cheered and applauded, because they knew it was finally over. Unbelievable.

I really did. How can people find this emotional and sad? Awesome directing by Von Trier, and very nice actors (except Bjork, she ruins the entire movie. I heard she never wants to act again, and i'm very happy!), but the story just seems stupid to me and it has been forced too much to be a sad tale. There's only one that really got to me: (SPOILER!!!!!!) when Midget shoots the police officer, and then she smacks in his head with an iron box, an then... THE GUY STANDS UP AND STARTS SINGING A SONG WITH HER!! I just laughed my ass off, but I doubted it was meant that way.