Hacker Cinema
Dancer in the Dark
2000 · Film · 140 min
Directed by Lars von Trier
Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her young son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life becomes increasingly difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.
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13 comments on Hacker News
I loved this when it came out. Lars von Trier was one of its creators and has a collection of amazing films. Check out Dancer in the Dark (2000) if you haven't already.
But it should be remembered as returning to an earlier technique. For example, one of the two or three greatest directors to ever live, Abbas Kiarostami, has a film called Where is the Friend's House (1987) which is pure -- and pure magic.
I don't necessarily disagree with this as a rule of thumb, but I thought it would be fun to come up with a few counter-examples. Most of these I would consider "artsy-fartsy" or "artsy-fartsy lite" movies that are popular with audiences but less so with critics.
Lost Highway (1997) - 68% Tomatometer - 87% Audience Score
Fight Club (1999) - 79% Tomatometer - 96% Audience Score
American Psycho (2000) - 68% Tomatometer - 85% Audience Score
Requiem for a Dream (2000) - 78% Tomatometer - 93% Audience Score
Dancer in the Dark (2000) - 69% Tomatometer - 91% Audience Score
Oldboy (2003) - 82% Tomatometer - 94% Audience Score
The Prestige (2006) - 77% Tomatometer - 92% Audience Score
Joker (2019) - 69% Tomatometer - 88% Audience Score
Dancer in the Dark. Man, that movie was relentless and brutal.
OMG I watched Requiem, and then Dancer in the Dark - and didn’t go back to the movies for 6 months! Since then I basically nope out of anything more stressful than Amélie.
Dancer in the Dark just went too far, meaning it eventually threw me like one of those mechanical bull things. As I watched it, I had such a powerful reaction to her exploitation that I was emotionally wrecked, but about 80% of the way through, her agony became so extreme that I ... started laughing. He just went to far, and I was like, OK, we just broke suspension of disbelief, and now her suffering is so extreme that it feels like someone is daring him to see how far he can go. Like in "Mother" (film): it went from tortuous to off-the-fucking-rails in a really funny exciting way. It didn't help that Kristen Wigg was an executioner, because I already think she's hilarious.
I loved most of the Dogme files - including the idiot, Festen and a few others. Not at all unwatchable, but certainly uncomfortable.
In my opinion, great art and great entertainment are two independent dimensions of filmmaking. Dogme films were (imo) great art, but difficult entertainment.
I had to stop watching that sort of thing after von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark (not a dogme film). I felt awful for a week.
Ooh, yeah, nice little art project. Well done.
A bit of a tangent, but gosh did I find Dancer in the Dark to be traumatizing. So sad! Bjork (whom I love) said she wouldn't do movies again after that one but I was happy to see her pop up in The Northman trailer.
> Is that a good criteria for whether a film is good or not.
I don't rewatch films as a rule but I do sometimes rewatch films with people who have not seen that film.
There are films like Dancer In The Dark, Grave Of The Fireflies, or Dogville that I simply cannot watch a second time because of the precise, agonising emotional turmoil they create. I will recommend this experience to everyone, and they too will watch it only once and recommend it to others.
Then there are films like Taken that I would never watch because they are dreadful, hateful trash.
I would consider the former list to be beautiful, painful exceptions to the idea that a film that can be watched endlessly is a great work. And even then I might be persuaded to watch them with someone I really loved. Perhaps. Though I'd have to love someone a lot to willingly watch through the end of Dancer again.
I would not be so enthusiastic about spending time with anyone who joyfully rewatches Taken.
Some filmmakers are so enamored by digital camera aethetics that they opt to shoot entire feature films in digital cameras.
- Anno Hideaki (of Evangelion fame) shot his first feature Love and Pop in digicam.
- Lars von Triers's Dancer in the Dark won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000.
I agree with this rule.
As a child, every time I encountered a character that was cruel to animals, I was like come the fuck on, that person is already clearly bad, how fucking lazy is this writer?
There was one book where there was one character which was cruel to cats in a very specific way. In 34, I am still feeling traumatized by that short, textual description.
I'm not disturbed easily. Just to quantify: a few years ago, I've seen an aftermath of a fatal car crash: bloodied children, first responders doing CPR on mother's body that didn't need it at that point (she was a goner; news said, she didn't wear a seatbelt). I helped clean the debris for the ambulance to come through.
I was fine at the scene. It wasn't on my mind a eek later. I didn't forget, but it wasn't disturbing anymore. And I didn't even know one can flip an SUV in clear weather.
But I can't get over that fucking cat murderer. I don't even remember the name of the book, or anything else from it. Just the way he did it.
I gained absolutely nothing from that, except a strong hatred for this cheap way of creating a villain.
Even though I learned, when I grew up, that some people do torture animals, and that it is a predictor for other horrible things that they do. That book might have been not just realistic in that description, but outright real.
..I still wish I could've un-read that part.
The only other thing that affected me that strongly was watching "Dancer in the Dark" as a teenager. It's still one of the movies that I'd rank as the Best of All Time. I have not seen it twice, and I don't feel I'm ready.
But at least the cruelty wasn't pointless there. It was a means, not the point.
Cruelty to animals as a villain's trait is rarely a means to an end. A hunter that skins his game isn't an example of that.
But, say, a character that skins an animal for fun is traumatizing.
The problem here is forcing the child to choose between being unempathic or traumatized.
Because either you empathize with the defenseless, tortured being (traumatic), or you get desensitized and learn to not feel bad about cruelty for cruelty's sake.
Which is precisely what we want to avoid.
Adding my yea to the mix.
For one, anime enables storytelling on a level and scope that would ordinarily be too expensive for real film production for most stories told. As an aside I think we're about to see a whole new level of mind-bending "realism" afforded to lower budget productions with tools like UE4/5.
You could argue that "animation" in general does this, but the particular (myriad) stylization choices in Japanese animation carry a fairly unique appeal. I think this was borne of a long-existing cultural tradition of prolifically illustrative literature.
For my part I had family that liked DBZ and similar ilk. The over-the-top-ness blinded me to the appeal as it just felt blah to me. It wasn't until I encountered more serious, darker themes in GITS, SEL, and others that I really grew attracted to the artistic potential of the medium.
I personally feel that art, in whatever form, is validated by making the observer feel something. Even if it makes them feel disgusted, annoyed, inspired, becalmed, horrified, and so forth. Given this, I value anime (or storytelling in general) that knocks me over the head with the emotional intent of the storyteller. It's really hard to get right without being heavy-handed (thus diluting the effect).
Two amazing examples come to mind: "Grave of the Fireflies" and "Ghost Hound"
Grave of the Fireflies is semi-autobiographical and will mess you up for days afterwards. Kind of like Bjork's "Dancer in the Dark". Both do an excellent job of forcing you to take a perspective that most will (fortunately) never have to endure in real life.
Ghost Hound touches on frankly f'ed up themes that an adolescent is trying to cope with. It engages supernatural elements that honestly at times practically noped me out for the imagery and setting alone. Of course this is animated fiction but the way the viewer is pulled in to the story with the protagonist was so well done that you can forget the medium to a degree. Highly recommended.
(Don't read/watch anything about these before watching if you can avoid doing so. Best to come in unopinionated.)
On a side note, I found SEL polarization to be very telling. Some people absolutely hated Serial Experiments Lain, while others like me were drawn to the bizarre reality of the story. I think the fact that this medium can be so polarizing validates my claim that this is art.
“Dancer in the Dark” and the absolute performance of Bjork. Unbelievable. Discovered movie from her song and it was deeply deeply painful. Cried so much.
I usually base it on the movie's stars, theme or genre, then read up its synopsis (short movie description on imdb or theater's website), and if it's less likely to have some kind of twist or I don't mind spoilers at the time, then I'll watch the trailer.
I'm also not really picky, so don't mind giving a movie a try without knowing anything about it in advance (Dancer In The Dark, Oldboy, and Snowpiercer come to mind as wonderful surprises, for example).