Dogville is a film written and directed by Lars von Trier, starring Nicole Kidman and others. It was released in 2003. Set in the 1930s, the film tells the story of the mysterious woman grace who comes from the city to the closed and conservative Dogville in order to escape the pursuit. In order to stay, Grace began to help the families in the town. In this process, the dark side of human nature is constantly enlarged, and Grace had a nightmare experience at last. It is obviously not enough to define the real connotation of the film as a revenge of the heroine. (Abella, 2004) This article will focus on the unique stage style of the film, and combined with the shots to show the profound connotation of the film. At the end of the article, this paper will tell how to appreciate this film with strong director's personal style better.
First of all, on the whole, the film is unique. From the beginning of the film, it presents the director's unique technique of expression: starting with a panoramic view, it seems to examine the whole town from the perspective of god. Considering the height limit of the studio, the director revealed that he used more than 150 synthetic lenses, from overlooking the panorama to pushing forward the shots until it landed in the home of doctor Tom and his son Tom. The whole film is presented in the form of a stage play. The whole stage is only divided into squares with white paint to distinguish whether it is a street or a house. Everything is flat except people and furniture. The plants are flat, and the dog is flat. The actors who play different residents show different scenes of work and life, and show their careers and characters through non-physical performance. The stage is very limited and there is no space outside the stage. In this way, it shows Dogville is isolated from the world. This kind of stage play's expression, as if from the perspective of god, examines the alienation of human nature without rules and legal constraints. And through this minimalist way of stage play presentation, the director tries to eliminate the interference of props set and let the audience focus on the actor's performance. In terms of shooting techniques, the director also combines stage play with film to create a unique and strong stylized visual presentation effect. (Denny, 2016)
One of the scenes at 1:54:16 is that Grace is ready to leave secretly because of a nonexistent crime. After careful planning, Grace gets on a truck driver's car which was carried many apples and is ready to leave Dogville. She hides in the truck covered with linen. Gradually, the light becomes clear. In the picture, there are only Grace and the mature and charming apples in the wooden box. She opens and closes her eyes, and every move can show hope in her eyes. Because she finally escaped from this seemingly harmonious Dogville, which is full of hypocrisy and crime. With this idea in mind, she even bit an apple. This is the most hopeful scene of the whole film.
But the director's next shot is too cruel. Perhaps the last shot is not so full of hope, but in the background of this shot, it is absolutely a symbol of infinite freedom, infinite beautiful vision. The truck driver climb into the car and rubbed against Grace's side. He says some blandishments just in order to have sex with Grace and then threaten her with plain language. The picture here is not barefaced, the shooting is very obscure, even there is no lack of clothing, Grace's silence is almost not enough to call it "rape", but it is more shocking than any of the rape scenes I have seen. Grace's eyes are not full of panic or pain, not even despair, just empty. No matter how her body is abused, she is powerless and has no intention to fight. I think the main reason for this scene is that her porcelain doll was smashed. The porcelain doll represents her warm connection with the town. When the porcelain doll broke, her last connection with the town was cut off.
Although this shot is only about four minutes, I don't think there is anything more cruel than this shot. I hope it will fall into the bottomless abyss in just several seconds. Accompanied by the voice over, as if someone looks at everything in the town objectively and calmly from the perspective of god to further elaborate the role's subconscious psychology and expose the ugliness and hypocrisy of human nature. After that, Grace became a plaything for all the residents of Dogville. The residents vent all their sins on Grace. In this period, the advantages of special shooting techniques are reflected again. Because in this stage style presentation mode, the isolation of space is broken. So it appears more than once in the movie that when grace is invaded by the men in the town, the other townspeople in the same picture still turn a blind eye to the evils around her although they lack the obstacles. It shows the indifference of human nature in an almost absurd way. This kind of large-scale camera scheduling makes different actors often perform simultaneously because they break the space barrier, so it can better reflect the dark side of people.
In short, because of its unique shooting style, the film can better reflect the ironic theme of the film, that is, the evil of human nature. This paper mainly analyzes one of the scenes, that is, the scene of Grace's escape. Although the time of this shot is very short, it can be said that it is the most ironic scene in the whole film. At the same time, this paper combined with the scheduling of sound and the scene, through that it analyzes the scene in a deeper level.
Reference：
1. Abella, A. , & Zilkha, N. . (2004). Film review: dogville: a parable on perversion. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
2. Denny, D. . (2016). Signifying grace: a reading of lars von trier's dogville. International Journal of iek Studies, 2(3), 1-21.
