Lars von Triers is like a Danish version of Michael Moore, except he isn't funny and has never set foot in America. Still, the man has made a good career of making films showing that Americans are stupid, racist, two-faced, mean to dogs and generally not the sort of people you want to invite to Sunday dinner. He's a director who wants to "challenge" (read: "offend") his audience.
Why his films are screened prominently around art circles in the U.S. is a development similar to Howard Stern's success. For Mr. Stern's most passionate critics are also his most devoted listeners. They listen to his program just so they can list the reasons why they hate him.
Likewise, Lars von Triers really wants you to hate him. He wants you to hate him so much you'll have to watch his films in order to be justified in your opinion of him.
I suppose the biggest problem with the von Triers-brand of film marketing is that he still has to maintain the image of a high-class European filmmaker. This is why a Lars von Triers production is often "stylish" (read: "boring") and full of "meaning" (read: "itself").
This brings us to Manderlay, scheduled to screen at Culbreth this Friday night at 10 p.m. Manderlay is the sequel to the three-hour epic bore, Dogville. The first film examined the hypocrisy of small town Americana during the Depression. The town subjects a Gangster's daughter, Grace, who was running away from home, to all sorts of mistreatment and terrible abuse. Grace takes it all gracefully until the men in town start raping her on a daily basis. Eventually, dad comes in and she decides to have him take care of business. Her reprisals make pouring salt on wounds look like aromatherapy and go to show that Grace's father was not without irony when he named his daughter.
It's worth mentioning that the entire movie takes place on an empty soundstage. The townsfolk don't live in real houses per say, but white chalk on a black floor that denote where houses should be. It's a daring move that has been labeled by some as Brechtian, but I imagine when he talked it over with his accountants, they felt he was being a Dickensian Scrooge.
Keeping that tradition of blankness and absentminded monotony, Manderlay has Grace come across The Manderlay plantation where slavery has continued in spite of the Civil War and Thirteenth Amendment. Grace's father tells her not to interfere, but Grace, being the do-gooder that she is, does it anyway.
With her dad's hired muscle, Grace is able to free the slaves from their evil overseers and give them things like freedom, democracy and free-market economy. It's a not-so-subtle reference to the U.S. approach to foreign policy. Just to make sure the film "engages" (read: "really offends") the viewer, von Triers includes a scene where the original whites in power are forced to wear blackface and serve the freed slaves at dinner, according to Todd McCarthy in a May, 2005 article in Variety Magazine.
Eventually, things deteriorate and the film ends with more rape and more death. As film critic Emanuel Levy notes, Manderlay is, to its credit, shorter than Dogville and has more violence and sex.
In the end, this is a film that has the critics either bored or boiling by the time the credits roll. But that doesn't matter to von Triers: You already paid for your ticket.
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