Dogville (2004)

The greatest movie ever made..!

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Short and Simple Review by WubsTheFadgerLars Von Trier's experimental drama is an amazing feat of film making. The story is full of brutal, saddening, and heartwarming moments. The story is told in chapters, much like a book, with little scenery. The film elegantly puts forward some very deep questions about innocence, ignorance, and morality. The ending is brutal and left me stunned.The acting is amazing. Nicole Kidman performs flawlessly. She plays an innocence girl on the run who wants to begin a new life. Paul Bettany also performs very well. John Hurt narrates the story. His voice perfectly blends into the film as he describes the characters, their thoughts, and the story.The pacing is slow but I enjoyed how Trier takes his time in setting up the characters, the environment, and the story. The runtime can be overlong for nonmovie fans, but once you get into the film it goes by like the wind.Pros: An amazing experimental film, a powerful story, great characters, amazing acting, great questions asked by Trier, and slow pacing that develops the story and charactersCons: The pacing can seem slow to nonmovie goers and the runtime is a little long at almost three hoursOverall Rating: 9.2P.S. I would highly recommend this amazing film. The story, characters, acting, and the amazing and stunning ending is what makes this film a must see.

powerful. cold. dark. almost perfect. large themes presented in wise manner. Nicole Kidman does a splendid job and the option for theater scene is the most inspired. story about people, fears, feelings, sins and weakness, ambiguity of danger and pragmatic answers to it, it has the rare gift to remind the tradition of Old Greek tragedy. and that is the axis for its strange beauty. and the exploration of the others is the key for its profound dramatic. film of the silence, the dialogs are only shadows of it, it has the the science to use old truths for a profound, bitter confession about a woman, a community, decisions and desires, punishment and illusion.

Nothing quite like being beaten over the head with a trite morality play for three hours, with such naked and ham-handed emotional manipulation that I couldn't find a pinch of humanity inside.This was basically torture porn for overly emotionally invested people. I give it a few points for going out on a limb with the style, but again, it just feels like something a very high college student would come up with the day before the script was due. And it was a one-trick pony, the sense of style was never used effectively for anything else. It contributed absolutely nothing to the movie.The acting was fine, just terribly dull. Never felt the slightest connection to anyone, or felt that any situation was any more than a ridiculous farce; everything happened not because it naturally follows from the characters and events, but because it had to happen to move the plot forward. Everyone but Grace is basically a hive mind who feel everything in perfect lockstep with each other, like a good fable. The brutality followed the generic revenge flick arc trod by hundreds of other movies, even the narrator just felt utterly pointless and jarring, instead of quaint and unusual.Obviously, there are quite a few people who love it. Give it five minutes, and you'll already know if you'll enjoy the whole movie or not.

If you have never heard of Dogville (2003) you are not alone. Three hours is a lot to invest in what some call a blatantly anti-American diatribe in an experimental hybrid of theatre and film. But this avant-garde masterpiece should be seen, at least in part, by anyone who is serious about modern cinema. Danish director Lars von Trier has located the tiny hamlet of Dogville in America for many reasons but this allegorical meditation on the nature of evil and justice is as universal as the human condition, and is far more about a state of mind than a place.If you have not seen it, some facts will prepare you for what is a unique experience. Dogville is set on a minimalist stage with chalk lines for roads and rooms, no doors, a few props to separate inside from outside in this closed, struggling claustrophobic Depression-era community that is suspicious of all strangers. Originally written in Danish by von Trier, the translation to English picks up a lyrical formalism which is precise and slightly stilted that allows more time to reflect upon the dialogue. The amorphous production setting intensifies the impact of acting, and the camera-work moves around quickly from close-ups to panoptic 'eye-of-God' viewpoints to flat long-view pans, all dynamically lit to create the illusion that this is a real town.While the plot line is uncomplicated, the story is multi-layered and its interpretation challenging. The hamlet provides shelter for beautiful fugitive Grace who is so grateful she offers to work in return. The town progressively learns she is wanted by both 'the mob' and police so they increase her work hours to "compensate" for harbouring her. They demand more and more compensation with each revelation, increasing her work to hard labour from sunrise to sunset. Soon she is shackled by a leg-iron contraption, endures physical and sexual abuse in public. What appeared to be a benign hamlet becomes a hub of pure evil while the innocent and once-forgiving Grace learns about moral relativity and human failure.This extraordinary film pivots equally on the genius of von Trier and tour de force acting by Nicole Kidman. While a long film, it continuously builds tension towards an unpredictable and chaotic climax, with the various elements woven into a single narrative fabric by the expressive gravitas and ironic humour of narrator John Hurt. But there is little to laugh at in this nihilistic film about the ever-present potential for evil in all humans. It begs the question why we do not see more experimental films like this? The question answers itself: they are too risky. This film is not for everyone, but it is mesmerising, intellectually challenging, and so worth the effort.