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May Film - Dogville

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    May Film - Dogville

    As discussed on the OTF Film Club thread, I think it would be a good idea to have a monthly film that OTFers can catch and comment, debate and have Vietnams over. For the first go I've nominated Dogville.

    It's on Film4 on Monday at 11pm for those who have that channel. Film 4 tends to repeat movies in a cycle so check if that time doesn't suit. For those who have rapidshare I can I give you link to it via PM. It's widely available in DVD stores and rentals also.

    Happy viewing all. I'll probably get to watch it over the weekend but feel free to post if you've seen it.

    #2
    May Film - Dogville

    I could only stand about five minutes before I threw in the towel, but I'd be interested in what other people have to say, though I doubt I'd be talked into a second look.

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      #3
      May Film - Dogville

      I think we had quite a good discussion of this on the old board. I'll see if I can dig it up.

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        #4
        May Film - Dogville

        Dogville is an absolute masterpiece in my opinion. It's completely stunning. I was utterly enchanted by it. I guess I'll wait till next week to be more detailed...

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          #5
          May Film - Dogville

          I haven't had any luck finding the thread on Wayback yet, so I'll post a brief summary of my thoughts, so far as I can recall them (it's been several years since I watched it).

          Basically, I really liked what he was trying to do with the mise en scene, using theatrical conventions to try to universalise and (arguably) Hellenise the action, but I don't think the story/writing is strong enough to do the allegorical work von Trier wants it to do.

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            #6
            May Film - Dogville

            The movie can be viewed on the internet here

            http://www.watch-movies.net/movies/dogville/

            albeit in a poorer format, but you can't beat the convenience (and price...), so the viewing cycle could be shorter.

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              #7
              May Film - Dogville

              ****PLOT SPOILER (or do I need to do this in a film commentary thread?)*****

              GY: Absolutely agree about the mise en scene, but your comment about the allegorical value of the film is only true if one assumes that von Trier actually *didn't* mean to suggest that Americans in general were deserving of a good slaughter. I kind of think he did mean to suggest it.

              ***PLOT SPOILER OVER*******

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                #8
                May Film - Dogville

                I really liked Dogville, but the best thing about it was the deadpan narration by John Hurt. It defined the entire tone of the film, making it drolly witty when it could easily have ended up annoying instead.

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                  #9
                  May Film - Dogville

                  *insert predictable rant about film piracy here*

                  I found the story completely compelling; within the set-up the film has I found it totally believable. That's what von Trier does I think, however vile the things that happen, they ring true kind of psychologically.

                  The mise en scene is fabulous too, I wasn't sure how it would work before I watched it, but I found it allowed me to get more into the story, like the absence of the usual kinds of barriers in the world created something much more meaningful, as it were.

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                    #10
                    May Film - Dogville

                    That's what I found jarring, though. A story that works on its own was very consciously and ostentatiously being used to do a lot of allegorical heavy lifting. Imagine Festen reworked as a heavy handed allegory about the fall of Danish civilisation.

                    I'd have been happier with presenting the story as it was more conventionally, for want of a better word, or making the story more allegorical to suit the mise en scene. As it was, I felt the two elements were working at cross-purposes and undermining each other. The allegory drew you away from the psychology while the psychology prevented you from generalising.

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                      #11
                      May Film - Dogville

                      For me the mise en scene was more about storytelling and kind of what does it mean to have to construct your own surroundings to locate a story in and so on and so forth, and for that it helped a great deal that the story was so good. Me I'm a bit wary of finding allegory in texts, I think it's always more problematic than it seems to be at first, and maybe von Trier was trying to extend this below the surface? I don't know.

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                        #12
                        May Film - Dogville

                        I thought Dogville was simply stupendous. I didn't expect to like it - I saw it in the cinema in a beautiful Cinemascope print.

                        I thought it was a marvellous meditiation on the cinema, on illusion, and on fiction as an escape. I also found the contrast between the incredible formality of the mise-en-scene and stylisation of set and performance with the wildness of the camera-as-actor to be genuinely thrilling.

                        Apparently in addition to von Trier operating there were a hundred tiny cameras on a grid which were Cgi-d together to create a composite picture. Magnificent.

                        And one of the few recent shows in whcih kidman looked good. The artificiality of the film matched her increasing artificiality of appearance and performace.

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                          #13
                          May Film - Dogville

                          I gave Dogville another try a couple of weeks ago, and it wasn't terrible after all. In fact, there was one scene that totally whacked me over the head with why--at least, in my opinion--von Trier used that staging: it was when Grace is first raped by Chuck, and I wondered, as the other townspeople went about their business, why aren't you all seeing this terrible thing happening? Then I remembered that there were supposed to be walls, but I think he was saying something about how communities turn a blind eye to their own problems when they really must know what's going on. Or in the context of the anti-American theme, how Americans ignore their country's faults even when they're so overt. So the unconventional set actually worked for me after all, except maybe having a dog marked on the set, with sound effects of barking. That was just weird.

                          The info about the little cameras explains something I wondered about: in an overhead shot, the chimney emitting smoke seemed to be at an angle, with the smoke blowing off to the side, when it should have looked like a circle, possibly not even visible because the cloud of smoke would have been moving toward the overhead camera/viewer.

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