aighhhh

[ellen_datlow]

I watched Dogville tonight--what a piece of ugly swill. Von Trier really seems to hate women--not to mention the US. Woman escaping from gangsters arrives in a small American town where she has to "persuade" everyone to like her so she can hide out. Her one ally is the handsome guy who finds her escaping and he gives her advice as to how to win over everyone. She befriends each but as the gangsters seem more and more eager to find her the townspeople start to show their true colors.

This is the first of his movies that I've seen the whole of (although I watched and loved the first year of his tv series The Kingdom and liked (less) the second year of it).

If you'll remember, I started to watch Breaking the Waves a few months and after twenty minutes could not continue--it was just too damp, clingy, depressing. Next to him Bergman's a comedian. Anyway, this is the first I've seen of his "Dogma 95" films: a group of Danish directors who subscribe to the philosophy of paring down the settings to almost bare stages, very plain camera work, and doing everything possible to prevent the viewer from getting totally involved in the movie as another world.

Which I admit I don't "get"--why would I want a movie to seem as if I'm not watching a movie. I'm sure he and his fellow Dogma followers have brilliant philosophical reasons but for me it's the antithesis of cinema. Anyway, I don't really want to see any more of his movies.

To cleanse the palate I watched the mindless, fast-moving Bourne Supremacy with a really neat car chase in the last 20 minutes and Brian Cox, Joan Allen. I probably should have started with the first Bourne movie but I could figure out what was going on. Oh yeah, and Frankie Potenta (who was great in Run, Lola Run looking anorectic in this one was in the first 20 minutes.

Nicely entertaining.

Comments

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

not to nitpick, but 'dogville' isn't adogme film, and goes against every convention set forth in the 'dogme95 manifesto.'
and he was actually the one of the few danish dogme directors, with most of the others being german, french, belgian, and american.
if you're really interested in seeing what the dogme films are like, i can't recommend 'julien donkey-boy' enough, by korine or 'festen' by vinterberg.
.
while i don't agree that von trier is necessarily misogynist, i do find his work to contain a discomforting degree violence and abuse toward women, which isn't really recitifed by the way he tends to have only women be 'pure of heart and deed.'
still, i'd rather have his examined yet aberrant ideas on film than the rape fantasies of fincher or the middle school misogyny of labute.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Von Trier, along with another Dane started Dogme 95 and according to Wikipedia
"They were later joined by fellow Danish directors Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, to form a group sometimes known as the Dogme 95 Collective"--so most of the Dogme directors were indeed Danish.

But you're correct that Dogville is not a Dogme film. I just checked out the actual manifesto --I'd mistakenly thought that the obvious low budget, hand-held camera work (at least it looked to me) and lack of proper mise-en-scene was all part of the Dogme manifesto-the hand-held camera is.

I like some of Fincher's work, couldn't stand The Panic Room but I don't recall anything that seemed like a rape fantasy in that: or The Game, Se7en, The Fight Club, or Zodiac--and those are his major movies....so which movies did you perceive rape fantasies?

I have no desire to watch most of LaBute although I liked Nurse Betty better than I thought I would.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

i actually really liked 'zodiac' and found it a shockingly mature film, given his previous work.
i suppose 'rape fantasy' was a poor wording choice, but i find the majority of women in fincher's work to be nothing more than objects of abuse, often used to hurt male characters by proxy, and i have yet to see an honest or sympathetic portrayal of a woman in any of his films.
(that being said, i do find 'se7en' to be an important film, even if an incredibly flawed one.)

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

To be fair, although I haven't read Fight Club I've been told that the movie is quite close to the book--so is it fair to blame the filmmaker for the way a female character is depicted? (I liked Darla a lot). The Panic Room while it sucks sucks sucks is a female empowerment movie (after starting out as a "women in danger" movie)...Unfortunately a LOT of movies use female characters as accoutrements rather than to depict real people.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

i think it is fair, since it's his film regardless of the original source material (which, for the record, i hated even more than the film.)
i just can't see 'panic room' as any sort of female empowerment film.
if anything, i see it as just two hours of a woman and her daughter being abused only to be saved by who fincher seems to showcase as the real hero of the film- forest whitaker's character.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

oh, also... about the dogme thing.
while it was founded in denmark, the majority of work since its found has come from places and directors outside denmark, so i find it a bit inaccurate to think of it as a danish film movement, at this point.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Fair enough--although I didn't realize it even still existed.