“Dancer in the Dark, the winner
of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, is a thrilling, audacious
work. The boldest experiment yet from Lars von Trier, one of the Danish
founders of the Dogma 95 school of filmmaking, Dancer is the
kind of ornery, brilliant film that inspires both adulation and scorn…
“Dancer stars Icelandic pop star Bjork, in a landmark
performance that's impossible to forget, as Selma, a Czech factory worker
living in Washington state in the early '60s. (It was shot in Sweden
and Denmark.) Living with her son in a trailer, Selma works at a factory,
frequents a local movie house with her best friend and co-worker Kathy
(Catherine Deneuve, convincingly dowdy) and wins the part of Maria in
an amateur production of The Sound of Music.
"Music and the movies are Selma's refuge. She's going blind (“It's
a family thing,” she says) and feels the burden of guilt for having
a child who also carries the gene. After saving for an operation to
prevent his blindness, Selma confronts a desperate neighbor (David Morse)
who steals from her, and makes the ultimate sacrifice for her son.
“Like Breaking the Waves, von Trier's biggest success
before this, Dancer in the Dark was shot on digital video with
handheld cameras and edited in a jagged, nonrhythmic fashion that chops
off the start or finish of sentences. That same technique felt like
a stunt in The Celebration and other Dogma 95 films, but here
it works emotionally: The camera doesn't just observe the characters
but seems to capture them in the current of their lives. It exposes
their fragility.” – Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle
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