If you try to know international cinema over the last decade or so, you have heard of Lars von Trier. And to know him is fear the crazy. He is often credited with pushing the DOGME 95 film chastity movement into the conscience of the the cinematic world. His film DANCER IN THE DARK received Oscar nominations and brought Bjork’s swan dress to the world. He keeps making movies “about America” but he won’t cross water and remains in his home land of Denmark with the occasional highly sedated drive over bridges in Europe.
His growing fame and influence brought enough attention that “mainstream” actors agreed to do a US trilogy with him. The first being DOGVILLE with Nicole Kidman, Lauren Bacall, James Caan, Paul Bettany & Ben Gazzara. It’s a highly stylized film – with a soundstage full of chalk outlines to represent… I don’t know half the time. Kidman runs away, taken in by these people who then begin taking advantage of her. I’m just saying the US does not come out good in this film.
Like the really good crazy in the world – someone happened to be recording it. The documentary DOGVILLE CONFESSIONS observes much of the shooting along with direct to camera confessions by the cast & crew. While the cast of ARMAGEDDON likely told the BTS crew how wonderful it was to work with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, the DOGVILLE cast plead for someone to get them the hell out of Denmark.
It’s the kind of documentary you wonder if John C Reilly and Bryce Dallas Howard wish they would have seen before starting the second film in the trilogy, MANDERLAY, about slavery. Don’t you get a hint from this documentary that donkey killing and interracial gang-bangs are in your future folks? Do I need to point out the third film didn’t get made?
If you go to YouTube, you can occasionally find segments from the entire documentary available. I discovered that it’s available in its entirety at INDIEMOVIESONLINE. Check out the trailer below before venturing off for the whole thing. This is a fair representation of what you’re going to get. Again, John C Reilly should have seen this first.
Dogville Confessions from Zentropa on Vimeo.
This blog is a quick look at Indie films you can catch on Video-On-Demand through such services as Amazon.com, Netflix, IndieFlix, and much more.
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