Part of Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair
Director Lars von Trier delivers a provocative mix of drama and musical theater in this acclaimed movie that won 2000 Cannes Film Festival Best Picture and Best Actress honors (for lead actress Björk). Rural factory worker Selma (Björk) is a single mother losing her eyesight from a hereditary disease. To protect her 10-year-old son from the same fate, Selma saves money to get him an operation. At night, Selma escapes into a world where “nothing dreadful ever happens,” rehearsing a production of “The Sound of Music” with her best friend (Catherine Deneuve). But when a neighbor (David Morse) betrays her trust, Selma’s life unravels — and the lines between reality and fantasy blur.
“A brave throwback to the fundamentals of the cinema — to heroines and villains, noble sacrifices and dastardly betrayals. The relatively crude visual look underlines the movie’s abandonment of slick modernism…. It is not a ‘well made film,’ is not in ‘good taste,’ is not ‘plausible’ or, for many people, ‘entertaining.’ But it smashes down the walls of habit that surround so many movies.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (Oct 20, 2000) “For all its fancy pedigree, the spellbinding DANCER IN THE DARK aims right for the heart and aces its target.” —Peter Travers, Rolling Stone “Both a heart-rending drama and a deconstruction of the Hollywood musical, reconstituted into something new and remarkable…. This is cinema at its most genuine, and most emotionally affecting.” —Cine Outsider
