Week 1

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As a pioneer in the movement of dogme 95, Lars von Trier continuing presented his philosophy of filmmaking in one of his American trilogy, Dogville. The theatrical mise-en-scène of this movie sets the whole town in a closed community. Lacking of background, unnecessary props and even authentic walls to separate houses, Lars von Trier’s Dogville dragged the focus of audience to purely the acting and content themselves rather than extravagant foreshadowing and obscure language. The non-diegetic sound, the specially designed theatre like narration, clears the plot up and stimulates deeper thoughts into questioning humanity and human beings.

Quoted from Kracauer’s Theory of film, 「From the angle of film the theatrical play is composed of units which represent a crude abbreviation of camera-life. To say the same in cinematic terms, the theatrical story proceeds by the way of 『long shots.』」 Those imaginary walls in the setting just serve as the function to allow audience explore freely around the town and zoom in and out accordingly. One of the most appalling scene is when Chuck raped Grace in the room while the camera stays far away, framing the entire town while focusing the rape scene through all these imaginary walls. At that time, everyone else is minding their own business. This is when I firstly realized Lars von Trier’s intention of such mise-en-scène. Dogville starts to uncover its hypocritical mask and expose its rotten interior.

In this theatrical story, arrogance is the key word of the movie. It repeated several times from the very beginning when Grace just arrived Dogville to the very end when Grace and her dad has this revealing conversation. Cutting the story into nine chapters is another commonly used technique on stage. Each prelude indicates what is about to going on. As the movie goes on, I feel like von Trier is not trying to stress on the plot, instead he wants us to dig into the story and see what is behind.

At the end of the film, the dog Moses, who were at the previous scene been depicted as a still life, came to life and barked towards the camera through a close up. This shot pulls the reality and the story to an even closer degree, that it further emphasizes this story of Dogville is not just a story but a reality could happen to any of us.   舉報