Dogville

Ambitious, intriguing but fatally self-important account of how an archetypal small town in the Rockies, proud of its ethics, turns against a woman (Kidman) apparently on the run from a gangster, notwithstanding the efforts of a free thinking liberal (Bettany). As a study in the social, psychological and philosophical dimensions of hypocrisy and intolerance, it pounds home its somewhat obvious points. As an exercise in Brechtian distanciation - there's a narration, with echoes of Thornton Wilder, beautifully intoned by John Hurt, and it's all shot in a studio empty of everything except a few basic props - it's gimmicky and never brought to a fruitful conclusion. And as drama it's repetitive and overlong. That said, the performances are strong, and the final scene, with its Capone the Father and Christ the Daughter associations equating the Land of Freedom with Sodom and Gomorrah, has an infectiously wicked glee that almost redeems the preceding portentousness.