You should only go into a Lars Von Trier film with a content warning or at least some knowledge of what the director tends to feature in his movies. They are often disturbing, long, and, in the case of Dogville, frustrating. Dogville—the first installment of his still-in-progress trilogy of films focusing on America—came out 20 years ago and, though a doozy to get through, features many unconventional approaches to filmmaking that are ripe for dissection.
Divided into nine chapters and a prologue, all heavily narrated by Englishman John Hurt, the film follows Grace (played by an outstanding Nicole Kidman), who shows up in Dogville, Colorado, an extremely sparely populated small town in the Rocky Mountains, in search of refuge from the gangsters chasing her. Tom Edison (Paul Bettany), an aspiring and rather unproductive writer, finds Grace as she attempts to cross the mountains and warns her of their impassability; he quickly takes a liking to her and helps her hide in the town’s old mine. She stays there until Tom tells the townsfolk about her and discusses with them—so democratically it’s almost ridiculous—if she should be allowed to stay. Though Grace is on the run, her gorgeous face and floor-length, fur-lined coat reveal that she might not be tied up in the predicament she claims to be in. Tom convinces the town to let her stay, and over the course of the film, their true personalities reveal themselves, showing they are not the simple, artisan townsfolk they appear to be at first.
Perhaps the film’s most defining characteristic is that the entire thing is shot on a sound stage, with just a few set pieces to designate where one structure ends and another begins. There are beds and desks in the homes but no walls or doors; when a character leaves a setting and shuts the door behind them, they mimic the action, and sound effects indicate it’s been shut. The streets and homes are labeled, while crude outlines on the black flooring indicate objects like the gooseberry bushes and the dog Moses. This sounds like it might all be distracting, especially given that the three-hour film never leaves this small, one-block town, but the rudimentary set serves its purpose well. As Dogville’s residents—played by an array of prominent actors like Patricia Clarkson, Lauren Bacall, Chloë Sevigny and Stellan Skarsgård—begin to be increasingly hostile, the lack of set allows the camera to reveal actions from points of view that would otherwise be impossible. The once timid and welcoming townsfolk become increasingly aggressive and violent, the tipping point coming when Chuck (Skarsgård) rapes Grace.
Up until the (first) rape scene, the film is pretty watchable if you can endure the avant-garde approach: the set, slow pace, endless narration and hand-held, shaky camerawork. From there, Dogville begins descending into an array of confusion and perversion. After the rape, Vera (Clarkson) confronts her for spanking her child—he provoked Grace to do it, much to her behest—and smashes all the gifts Grace had purchased. When Grace tries to escape in the back of a truck full of apples, she is then raped by Ben, who brings her back to the town where they collectively chain her to a heavy wheel, enslaving and allowing her to be raped by the rest of the men whenever they desire.
When this mess unfolds towards the end of chapter seven, it’s unclear where the story is going. Grace, who appeared suspicious at first and whom the police have shown up multiple times in search of, is now a victim. As the chapter draws to a close, you’re at a loss for what the story is actually about. What are the themes? Is this about gender? Or maybe American capitalism? Are the residents in a cult? What does Grace represent? In actuality, the film is about all of the above. The more you dig into it, the more that is revealed.
Von Trier, who is Danish, has a mixed opinion on the United States, at least, he did at the time of writing the movie. He finds the country unjust and uses the film to exhume its devotion to capitalism and its history of slavery by depicting a small town where socialism would be fit. The residents live in close quarters and depend on one another for survival; money doesn’t seem to play a big role in society to the point that cute glass figurines sit and accumulate dust in the storefront since no one really needs or wants them. That is until Grace comes along. When she first arrives, they welcome her help with excitement, and each person comes up with something for her to do to feel useful. Ah, the beauty of community. But as Grace finds reason to leave, they realize her labor works to their benefit, and she becomes the town’s sacrificial lamb. Who cares if she’s raped, depressed and stretched thin, she’s dependent on and helpful to them! It doesn’t matter that she is white and beautiful; capitalism works so that even the disabled, blind and Black residents of Dogville gleefully exploit her.
Like any American worker, Grace knows that trying to escape the system will result in her demise. The mountains are impassable (a metaphor for the necessity of money to thrive in America), and if she leaves Dogville, she risks getting caught by police and/or the gangsters. Therefore, she stays smiling and agreeable, puts her head down, and goes back to work and being raped. As a spectator, you want to yell at Grace and tell her to respect and defend herself, but you see the cycle she’s trapped in. When Grace finally does get caught by the gangsters (one of whom turns out to be her father, played by James Caan), you’re not sure if she’s going to be better or worse off. In the backseat of his Cadillac, he confronts her over her inability to see the bad in people. Finally, she realizes the people of Dogville no longer deserve her, and in a moment, there’s a change in Grace that feels both shocking and like a long time coming. “It was as if her sorrow and pain finally assumed their rightful place,” the narrator tells us moments before she calls for the gangsters to massacre the town. If the film were a game, no one would be crowned the winner, but at least justice is served, and Grace understands a bit more morality.
If you can handle the depictions of rape and gruesome ending, watching Dogville presents a plethora of techniques and themes worth dissection. Watching it leaves no question as to why it divided critics upon its release—particularly the sensitive Americans—and as the wheels of capitalism continue to grind Americans, it’s clear why the film is now highly regarded.
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