eleutheria >Dogville

December 16, 2004

Dogville 2

The Independent on Saturday informs me that Nichole Kidman has turned down a follow up role in Dogville 2, because of a busy schedule caused by an injury suffered during shooting of Moulin Rouge (what a waste!).

I hadn't even realised there would be a sequel.

Here, it says it's a trilogy:

Friday 12th September 2003: Dogville 2 Update: Nicole Kidman has said that there's still a chance she may end up doing the second part of Lars Von Trier's Dogville trilogy. "He wrote a great script which will be part of the trilogy. And who knows? Maybe it will end up working out. But at this moment I'm not doing it because he wanted to do it before June," she said. "Even though I am really dedicated to do it I do need to take some time with my kids. And that's what I am doing at the beginning of next year."

I've re-published my multitude of Dogville reviews here (read bottom up), and here's a great piece by Dread which brings back all the horror of the film: To the dogs

March 27, 2004

Dogville + Celebrity

I have been thinking about these new television programmes featuring "celebrities" living in the homes of non-celebrities, in a new light thrown on by Dogville. I saw the 5 Obstructions the week before, so when I saw Dogville, I immediately thought - "Ah, he's put Nicole Kidman in there to study her as a person - as a glamorous Hollywood actress with no way of using her glamour." She is playing a role where she has very little to hide behind. It's a 'nice' person (tough to act), the acting around her was slow, stage like, and wooden, and it seemed it necessarily would be because the actors had to do things like open pretend doors. It did seem very much like a school production, as the set was very stage like, and the actors all seemed like they were pretending. It was as if Lars Von Trier was purposefully undermining the actors, and the acting. These were my first impressions.

I reasoned that all this was done in favour of the bare bones of the story, and/or to put the actors on show. But actually, it seemed only to be Nicole Kidman on show, as a human being. I looked at her face a lot, and thought how much like Meg Ryan she looked, and if they had the same plastic surgeon or something. Usually, I may notice things like that and feel that the film maker has used the actor regardless - but in Dogville, these elements of her were being put to practical use. I was meant to notice everything like that. Obviously, she was meant to be an oddity in the play, too, a sophisicated city type brought to live in the small-town dowdy world of normal people.

Von Trier's techniques also included reproducing a mature / constructed version of 'wooden' acting. Conversation was very stilted and boring. The continuity was all disrupted, the actors at some points were in different positions one second to the next; Nicole Kidman was suddenly wearing makeup once when she was least in the position to be able to have some available and put some on (when she was chained to the bed, I think!). There were probably other things I didn't notice.

He was definitely undermining the reality of the pretence by showing reality existed too (and the reality even mirrored the pretence). I think this is really important. The reality of the actors, the reality of the person making a film, the reality of someone trying to communicate the ideas to the actors and to you. This way, real communication was acheived by this film. And he was really doing something new.

Now, I had previously noticed a new television programme on Channel 3 which featured celebrities going and living in a 'normal' family home for 2 weeks and carrying out tasks to win the family a prize. I was very shocked that the celebrity actually had to live there. I saw 2 episodes that stood out, one had Samantha Fox, another Tara Palmer Tomkinson. They have scenes of the whole family hugging and kissing the celebrity for winning the prize, and the celebrity all kitted out in revealing celebrity type clothes. There are lots of hints from the presenter about how much the men must have liked having the celebrity in the house, but they all always get on "really well", and "feel really part of the family". The celebrity is there as a human being open to scrutiny, but necessarily as a celebrity (there's no other good reason to be there), and also as someone who has to be nice. Maybe, at first, this seemed to be the position that Nicole Kidman acting as Grace was in too.

There is another version of the programme with the Hilton Sisters, Simple Life, which I saw only once but think does all the same kind of things. None of these programmes seemed to manage to rise above voyeurism in aim or achievement.

There is no comparison between these faintly disturbing and grubby programmes and the film Dogville, but the film reminded me of them nevertheless, and I may not have put my finger on why.

March 25, 2004

Fall and Rise: dogville, Reggie Perrin & me

I have recently read The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. I bought the book in a chapel bookshop near Dunwich in Suffolk. It was less silly than I remember the series being - a serious and funny book. I felt that the story of dogville was also the story of Reginald Perrin.

Reggie and Grace feel an allegance to or an affinity with the world of losers and rejects from the society they want to escape. They say "I'm one of you now" and try and make it work, and are proud of their achievements in their newly created life. For them both, it is only when they return to their proper sphere that they take on a powerful role.

The story of Reginald Perrin is also a story I am familiar with in my own life. I used to wish I could phone up work and say "Sorry, I've had a nervous breakdown and I can't come into work today". In the end, me and the other R did a runner together, down to Cornwall, after leaving very well paid jobs and affluent lifestyle - we had worked hard and with dedication. I got a job as a temporary post lady and another job as a gardener, and hoped to lead a simple life, away from the horrors of the global economy and the futile sophistication and decadance of London life. I felt I was a "simple" person, lacking the need to show off in nightclubs, or be "busy" all the time, I also thought I lacked the hardness of heart that was required to live there and that was why I wanted to run away. The last straw, I remember, was seeing a lady on a train treating a child so badly that I got off the train at Mile End and burst into tears. Now this, my new chosen world is no good. Here's one example: I resigned from my job in the PO after working for a respectable length of time (1 year). Early in the job, when I was still training, one of the postmen in my small rural post office drove around to find me on my training round to say "there's been a complaint about you". I was horrified. Someone on one of the council estates was "very upset indeed" to find one of her letters on the ground outside - now, did I remember posting it, or had I dropped it?" I couldn't remember, and felt like resigning on the spot, I was so disillusioned and angry. There was a reason I wanted more, and left Cornwall 10 years ago, and I'm beginning to see it more plainly now. This area is still economically and socially deprived and now I'm here, I want to hide away less and less! As I grow older, the bouncing back and forth will surely slow down and become less extreme.

Dogville + depression

feeling very tired and worn out now, like it's the end of my life. I don't feel like i've got any strength to be bothered.

my mind's really clinging onto lars von trier and the film Dogville, so it gives me hope to carry on - one good thing out there in the world. I remind myself again and again of the poignant moment when the man from the series "7 Up" who said he wanted to be a coach driver, aged seven, said at 21 or 28 "I really want to be a coach driver now". That moment has stayed with me and I have understood it better and better as I've grown older; at least, lets say, it's a moment I have returned to and felt in tune with many times. In hard times, something that breaks through to remind you that there was once a time when you wanted something, and there was a possiblity. How you cling to the faintest dream. I don't know. The world of criticism and unpleasant stupidity tires me out so much, and lars von trier seems to be producing the antithesis of criticisable things, being self critical, and being experimental. Dogville has added to my dream world, basically, giving me somewhere to relax in (there IS something outside that is happening) but also something to agitate me out of my current situation (and make me depressed in it). I feel like: Why am i always living on the edge?

I really like the idea of revenge that Von Trier talks about "I was listening to Pirate Jenny, the song by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill from The Threepenny Opera. It's a very powerful song and it has a revenge theme that I liked very much." (dogville site.) I found Dogville reminded me of Straw Dogs, but was satisfying.

In both films, I desperately wanted the "rescue" to take place. I read a comment on the Dogville website forum that victims don't get rescued. And I suppose it's a dream come true, when degradation is at it's height and the situation can only be resolved - & a new start made by the victim - by destroying everything concerned with it. That's just what has to happen when things get that bad. It seemed, to me, a pathetic victim's dream in the Pirate Jenny song. But in Dogville, Grace doesn't have any dreams of escape, aside from the escape from turning into an aggressive personality.

But like Von Trier says, Grace's escape from power has given power to a number of other people (the residents of Dogville), by "giving herself as a gift", and they have systematically pushed her to the limit of the possiblity of her generosity. And she didn't conceive of this possiblity before it happened.

Straw Dogs also ends in a righteous fight, when it's all too late, and the victims have been weak for too long, and the only possible way to survive is to destroy the enemy of their values (the enemy created by their own ineffectiveness,
damn it*) by force. I found this more immediately terrifying in Straw Dogs because the victims were completely unsupported.

*Implied here is my belief that posh people, strong and stable types, somehow manage to avoid these types of situations with their strength of character, and an ablility NOT to drive people into a frenzy of anger and hatred against them?

I was comforted by the Mafia's God-like presence in Dogville. (This obviously means I'm susceptible to the idea of protection and justice, but I don't believe in God.) A regular fear of mine is that there is no route though all this, and that 99% of people are just always going to obstruct me and and wear me down until I have to move on and start again with a whole new set of them. That's why I keep thinking i live on the edge. I keep on learning lessons the hard way, and ending up in fights with people, and these obstructions block my progress and make it all feel painfully slow sometimes. I keep thinking, if only people could see that I was strong and prepared to fight if I had to (IE, if only I didn't hide my strength and unwillingness to be the victim that seems to be equated in the 99% of minds with my undemandingness of people, and dis-inclination to be aggressive to them) - if only this, then it wouldn't always have to end in aggressive confrontation.

(Being more tough on myself, this is a feeling of " if only people really knew me"... how good, how kind, how clever, how fair.)

This is a hard lesson to learn, as it means a person can never be "themselves", can never relax, because this isn't an ideal world; we always have to be acting - showing what we are capable of at all times - so that we can fend off other's power over ourselves. To submit to doing this, is to submit to being "just like everyone else".

"You have to have some limits".
Now, my attitiude has turned to positivity. I believe that the only thing to do is to produce (and I mean to produce experimentally and freely), or I'll repeatedly be the victim of losers sadder than me, because I'm too ashamed to admit to them that I think I'm better and more capable than they are, though it is clear that I think so because I hold myself apart from them in a patronising way and I "feel sorry" for people. This is confrontational and leads to confrontation.

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By the way, of the 6 people watching Dogville in Penzance cinema screen 3, Saturday night, one third walked out during the excruciating beginning of the film. They might have stayed an hour. The film lasted about 3 hours and was worth every minute. At the beginning, I, too, was all criticism, but the film soon shut me up! One of the prejudices shattered was Nicole Kidman as Grace. By the end of the film, I was pleased Nicole Kidman was in the role, not least because she would encourage more people to go to the film. And I felt she endured well the scrutiny of the role.

"Nicole said that she wanted to work with me and I wrote the part of Grace for her or rather, for the image I had of her. I found out that she's a very, very good actor. It was interesting to take someone who had mostly done these colder characters and to let her do something else. And of course it's intriguing to take a Hollywood film star and put her in a film like this. It might give us a different audience than we otherwise would have had, so long as they are not scared away by the fact that there's nothing but a black floor with actors on it"