Не удалось устроиться на лучшую работу, потому что там ликвидировали должность. Опять депрессия.
2006-10-31
We live as long as we fly
So I watched Manderlay, meaning the sequel to one of my all-time favorite movies - Dogville. By the way, there's multi-level irony at that link, so don't get the wrong idea.
What do I have to say?
I don't understand people who interpret Dogville according to what they see and hear, according to what happens on the screen. It's obvious that the director wouldn't spend 3 hours of his time just to spoon-feed essentially simple things to the viewer. Moreover, the narrative feels like a school textbook - first the event, then its explanation, then the consequences and changes caused by what's happening are shown. If it were really just that, Dogville wouldn't be as good a movie as it is.
In reality it's a kind of postmodernism. In regular postmodernism everything just looks like playing with symbols, and there is no "real" meaning. Here, however, what's happening looks perfectly logical and understandable, and you can even come up with several plausible explanations for it. Then take it as a moral lesson, which is exactly what many critics do. But personally, I'm left with the feeling that the author allows the film to be perceived this way purely to mock the naive viewer or critic. There's also no such thing as "the film contains many different ideas to think about." You can, nobody's arguing with that, but do you need to? In fact the film lands straight in your subconscious, where you don't even understand yourself what impression it made, but its influence on you is real and present, even though it doesn't contain a "real" meaning, as postmodern cinema should. And such a film is something worthwhile. If in regular postmodernism a new meaning emerges thanks to deconstruction, then with von Trier - thanks to reconstruction. Support for this point of view can be found in Lars's interview or right here in this clear and simple article about postmodernism.
Getting back to the matter at hand. In "Dogville" everything was indeed exactly as I described. But in Manderlay - I'm not so sure. The plot and the events themselves are a bit too simple to be able to embed that same "NLP programming" that allows you to brainwash the user. On the other hand, it's ridiculous to even imagine that von Trier was actually interested in racism or the theme of slaves who want to remain slaves ("if you were a slave, you will stay one for life" - postmodernism everywhere). Naturally, he simply used this as building material for playing with the viewer. The bummer is (as was already rightly noted by ears_of_tin), that von Trier, using different "bricks", is building the exact same building he already built once. Everyone does this, no argument there, and sometimes it comes out beautifully. But you expect more from Lars!
Here the mocking grin of postmodernism peeks out again - von Trier quotes himself in both big things and small. For example, in Dogville the viewer constantly thinks they understand everything, and the voice-over even reinforces this impression. But in the next moment the situation suddenly changes. Even though this is logical, and understandable, and more or less predictable, it's very uncomfortable. And when Dogville ends, the viewer sighs in relief - they understand everything again - well, it's all over, and that's that. But with the release of Manderlay it suddenly turns out that everything has changed again, and the picture already established in the viewer's mind is uncomfortably shattered, just as it was throughout the whole first part. True, some stretches in the characters' behavior look weird, especially the main heroine, who drearily keeps stepping on the same rake, having gotten plenty of bumps on the head in the first part.
On the other hand, it might just happen that the architecture of the new project is actually different, but we simply can't realize it, focusing only on the construction techniques. It might also happen that ears_of_tin is wrong, and the architectural ensemble isn't finished yet, and will only become whole with the appearance of the third film - it's not for nothing that von Trier conceived a trilogy.
The conclusion is this - Manderlay is a good movie, even if it is weaker than Dogville. But we have to wait for the third part to understand that we won't actually be able to understand a thing.