THE INNER BASTARD: VON TRIER'S DOGVILLE

This chapter focuses on a series of films that establish a very antagonistic relation to the spectator. They do so in view of putting across a political and/ or ethical message, and it will be argued that the directors all work from the hypothesis that the best – the most efficient – way to communicate their specific message is to go through the body of the spectator to her intellect. Not surprisingly, the films discussed in this first part have therefore generated a great amount of controversy. My opening example of this confrontational approach is Lars von Trier's Dogville (2003). The film might be less graphic than The Idiots (1998), Antichrist (2009) and Nymphomaniac (2013), yet its reception demonstrated that, once again, the director had managed to get under the skin of his viewers. The Cannes jury, for instance, condemned the film with a term that summed up many others’ feelings about it: ‘anti-humanism!’ I shall discuss this label in some detail, but first it is important to consider how von Trier creates the feel-bad experience.

For some viewers Dogville is a film about Grace (Nicole Kidman). We are in 1932, and she is the beautiful stranger who, under mysterious circumstances, comes to the small town of Dogville at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The idealist, self-proclaimed author and thinker of the town, Tom (Paul Bettany), is charmed by her beauty and he convinces the citizens of Dogville that by welcoming her they can demonstrate their commitment to the virtues of hospitality and community. Grace makes herself accepted by helping the community, but when both gangsters and police appear to be searching for her the townspeople decide that it is only fair for them to ask ‘more’ of her (the film repeatedly manipulates this economic vocabulary – which the presence of Grace, as her name clearly indicates, upsets). She goes from being a helper and errand girl to a hardworking servant and, eventually, a sexual slave mercilessly exploited by the male citizens of the town. When Grace refuses Tom, the only man who has not turned rapist, he sends for the gangsters, thereby giving her over to what we expect to be her certain death.