Lars von Trier (Dir.), 2003.
In many ways, an obvious choice for the study of film and architecture, this is a minimum-of-means approach to architecture on film. The plan form is shown at the opening of the film, an overhead establishing shot which shows the spare setting of black floor and white chalk with text and small amounts of scenery and props.
The overwhelming feel is of a stage play.
Straight away, the audio becomes an issue. With the street scene, some foley effects are included such as doors: but the voice is dulled and colourless. A flatness of the aural scene, where we are told it is raining, but characters do not act like it is; the movement through a sodden street is not represented… None of the howling wind.
Much of the scene is added in by the sonorous voice of John Hurt in voice over, expanding upon the details shown visually. This gives way to Tom’s tour which highlights the tiny details which have been purposely left in. It’s curious that some are still drawn, despite repeated reference. The selection criteria are left unclear: why the figurines and why not the gooseberry bushes?
The horizontality of this Abbot-esque flatland is disrupted a little by the suspended bell tower, always announcing the elements of set as significant rather than a self evident fact. The town is edited away in a manner similar to Alphaville’s cutting of Paris until the hellish ubiquity of Alphaville’s remains. This is an exercise in the minimum required to establish a location.
The space is relational. There is a greater clarity and consistency in this film’s use of space than there would be normally, where locations are cut together in ways which are illogical to a resident. This scene is stable and clear: things remain in the same positions, and spaces are created between characters as they meet. Conventional Hollywood devices of shot-reverse shot are used when Tom and Grace meet, setting up a classic language which runs counter to the Dogme ’95 rules famously constructed by von Trier.
The blind character is something of a motif, the reliance on memory of light and time and position: he is something of a code for the film itself, filling in the world from a mental image rather than what is presented, somewhat like the invitation directors such as Tarkovsky give to their audience to furnish the narrative with further details.
The narrative itself has clearly allegorical aspects, with the incomer who is tolerated as long as she is grateful, never truly accepted since the gratefulness is an essential component of her presence giving rise to bullying and persecution: accepted only so long as she works ever harder, never complains, doesn’t upset the order of things. Handing people control makes them ugly towards one another, and the constant act which Grace has to put on, negotiating the petty needs of Dogville’s inhabitants becomes increasingly wearing. The one good man is weak and indecisive, eventually as bad as the rest of them. It is a failing city or state in miniature.
In the simple lives of the Dogville residents, God is a gangster.
More to follow on Manderlay.
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Distracted Attention 