Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Artwork for Foreign Theatrical Release

It's been over a week and the utterly depressing aura around this film is still heavy upon me, so viewer beware.

From the very beginning, this film moves to straddle between nostalgia and a weirdly disassociated emotional spectrum with a very haunting and mesmerizing sequence, an homage to the films of Golden Age Hollywood that would start with abstract shifting coloration while the score swelled in the background.

It is a strikingly beautiful film, full of gorgeous and rich, even if bleak, art-direction and compositions.  Almost entirely achieved through the heavy use of close-ups and medium shots, with no establishing shots whatsoever, which, here, I don't mind at all.  And that's rare.

One of the most striking things, is the way the sound is edited and mixed to create a 3D space, even through the prism of a stereo speaker, with sound sometimes emanating from behind, forcing me to jump and question my sanity, and consequently that of the characters and filmmakers.
 
The compositions are a direct response to the fact that the film seems to have been almost exclusively shot with one camera and improvised, making retakes and b-roll an impossibility.  This in turn forces the editing to be jaunting, abrupt, and as far from textbook clean editing as possible.  But the film draws from this disjointedness instead of suffering at the hand of it, creating an ingrained sense of sadness and depression.

In this task, the camera work and editing are aided by the palette of a very dry and bleak cinematography, completely devoid of color and full of textures and patterns, which although the film doesn't specifically pinpoint the location, places itself somewhere between the back hills of Appalachia and the Midwest of the Dust Bowl.

Speaking of things undefined, there's a very nostalgic, weirdly unnervingly so, feeling to the film, which is never resolved.  Leaving one to question what the filmmakers are trying to make us nostalgic for and why? Is it the 1950s, playing card in bike spoke and all, or is the narrative caught in the weird flux of time that seems characteristic of factory towns raptured from their long gone affluence?

Artwork for Foreign Theatrical Release

For people who grew up with two memories of Bjork, an eerie voice and a swan dress, here her acting really shines, which is no easy task considering the stellar performance from the entire cast.  Her character struggles between being simple and complex, strong and weak, feminine and masculine, victim and stubborn cause of her own complications, like a weird Sisyphus trying to fight a rock she can't see or comprehend.  A good wounded bird and despot, a depressing protagonist, and a relatively hard one to stomach through her faults.

This film is painful, even before the inevitable end, a truly gut-wrenchingly painful film that had me not just crying, but bull blown bawling!

I hate whoever told me to watch this film, it's so beautiful even if cringe worthy, a la Shame (2011).

Go rent this film, it's worth hunting down, just make sure you're in the mood for it.