Why Dancer In The Dark is Unique?
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Lars Von Trier has self proclaimed himself as the best movie maker ever and he has a point. He is not your typical Hollywood epic-maker. He doesn't care much about pleasing the audience. It seems like what he cares about is the opposite. It is to displease the audience. To put them in front of uncomfortable ideas that they might be otherwise too afraid to even entertain, and lead them through that Neropineuphoria and suffering to a mode of slight enlightenment that might make them understand, or at the very least comprehend some deranged reality of human existence.
Lars isn't afraid to experiment cinematically, he will use one ultra-stylistic approach in Europa and then completely different one in Breaking The Waves. In Dogville he will not use decorations. In Melancholia he will spoil the movie in the first few seconds to give himself a challenge to make it interesting despite this. And in Dancer In The Dark he will do a musical.
I came into the film without any knowledge that this film is a musical. I failed to see the obvious foreshadowing to it. The casting of the singer Björk for the lead character, the word "Dancer" included in the damn title, the beginning of the film, where Björk's character prepares to dance in a stage-play. All of that went over my head. And when the first musical number started I was pleasantly surprised.
The film is shot in a very Breaking The Waves borrowed, hand held style. Though this time Lars experimented with using digital cameras, and digital cameras in late 90s and early 2000s weren't very good to begin with. Yet Lars apparently specifically chosen to smash the colors of the image even further, to make it look as ugly as possible. Which is a complete opposite approach from what expected when making a musical. But that approach doesn't stop with just the color scheme. Lars chosen to shoot all of the musical sequences with completely stationary cameras, to contrast it both with the rest of the movie and with other musicals, that love their extravagant camera dances. Lars is forcing himself as much as he can to avoid being Spielbergian. And the music isn't what you call conventionally nice either. Björk, who did the music for the film is also an experimenter, and in this film she made music using industrial equipment for rhythm section, which sound rather Björk-esk if you ask me.
The film is political in strange sense and is also philosophically sophisticated. It is set in the United States of America, specifically to explore the problems of the health care system and disabilities in that country. Björk's character and her son in the film have eye issues warranting expensive operations, that leads characters into various, I might say, adventures.
The movie philosophically explores stalkers, consent to be killed and the death row. Making very uncomfortable observations about everything it touches upon. The movie goes to show how easy is to corrupt a good policemen. And explores various potential consequences for such corruption.
This film somehow avoided Lars's obsession with sex, for some reason. But there are quite a few uncomfortable violence scenes. Or other scenes that would be very cringe to experience. Lars Von Trier is a master of cringe. He knows exactly how to do it just right to be the most effective.
Lars set out for himself to make a tear-squeezingly sad musical. Not the kind of bitter-sweet one as in Moulin Rouge, or West Side Story. But truly depressing and ugly musical. Where you cry not because of how sad it is that somebody loves somebody that died, but rather because there is no love. Because the life is so unfair, you can't bare it. It worked. Lars squeezed very strong on my tears with this film. It broke me psychologically so much, that I couldn't stop long after the credits were done. This is true mastery of the art form. Lars perhaps isn't lying when he claims that he is the best.
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