Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Director: Lars von Trier
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
After the rigours of The Idiots, von Trier returns to Breaking the Waves territory with another emotionally upfront, somewhat hollow tale of self-sacrificing, saintly womanhood. In rural America, Czech single mother Björk keeps quiet about her rapidly deteriorating sight so that she can retain her factory job and pay for an op to prevent her son from going blind. After she accidentally kills her neighbour (Morse), who has stolen her savings, her continuing refusal to keep the truth from her child makes for 'tragedy' (or so the director would define it). What makes the film a little unusual is that every so often it jolts into dance-musical sequences, illustrating the optimistic fantasies into which our brave heroine escapes. The trouble is, all the cameras in the world (and a 100 were reportedly used for some scenes), coupled with MTV-style editing, can't conceal the imaginative poverty of von Trier's response to the (admittedly ho-hum) choreography, nor the disingenuous contrivances of the plot. Whether one finds Björk's angelic attempts to console fellow Death Row inmates with a song deeply moving or offensive, trivial and tasteless is a matter of personal sensibility (I gagged!), but, Deneuve's under-used presence as Bjork's workmate notwithstanding, there's no denying that this can't hold a candle to the best work by Demy, let alone von Trier's beloved Dreyer.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Lars von Trier
Producer: Vibeke Windeløv
Cast: Björk, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare, Joel Grey, Vincent Paterson, Cara Seymour, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier full cast
Genre(s): Musicals
Duration: 139 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now