Dogville

(Be Advised - SPOILERS)

There is something utterly disgusting about Lars von Trier's "Dogville," which is belied by the richness of production and the sheer weight of acting talent. It's the story, shot as a play without an audience, of what seems to be a gun moll escaping to a small Colorado town for refuge. The town slowly plays out its suffering on her, like a J.G. Ballard story, where the human race slowly devolves into its most primitive forms. She turns out to be the daughter of a mafioso, and she orders the execution of the whole town in the film's finale.

But the disgust is not in the story, it's in the sheer adolescent arrogance of the director, in his pompous and supercilious dismissal of human weakness. The end montage, of America's downtrodden, is really horrific to see, like some Versailles aristocrat pointing out their window at the suppurating peons in the slums below. The setup is so easy and yet the payoff so self-righteous, and psychologically stupid.

The film sketches certain moral issues, about responsibility, liberalism, but never plays them out with any integrity. What you get is a cypher for the director to play out his own disgust, to make of the characters what the characters make of the mob daughter: a scapegoat and screen for projection.

Because the production is so skillful, it wasn't till the very end of the film, as the denouement was reached, that the simple point of the film was reached, and the director got to piss on everyone and walk off content. It's like listening to a long, sophisticated speech about race relations, which then ends, "And that's why I hate niggers."

The disgust of the film is supposed to be directed at the morally weak, while in truth its deserved focus is the director himself.