Okay, Maybe You're Right About Dogville

All right! Your arguments have convinced me. Dogville does add up. What was I thinking? Your far-ranging theories have opened my eyes. And given me lots to think about besides. There's the whole "who's a moralist in an amoral society?" And that thing about anti-Americanism being totalitarian in itself ... And then .... there's ... when Jane said... and Tom's good point about... and ... It's all good stuff.

Dogville

I'm still trying to process Dogville. I don't think I've ever seen Nicole Kidman seem so weightless and facile. But I think she was directed that way. She plays a character who comes to the small town of Dogville and becomes a sort of magic force to everyone for a while. She helps a blind man deal with his blindness, she gives womanly support to a restless girl, she babysits, she rakes, she listens, she offers endless kindness. What's striking is her passivity. She responds to everyone but initiates nothing. A love scene where she says "I love you too" seems puzzling because her voice is so light and affectless when she says the line. It's like she's just going through the motions of classic scenes.

But that's what's fascinating about the movie. It doesn't do so many things other movies do. It has no dimensions -- the town is drawn on a black floor with chalk. The houses are pretend. The characters are sunk into stereotypes of bitter, closed mountain people. There are no scenes (well, few) where someone reveals a secret or a depth of humanity. It's like an outline of a movie, like the houses are just outlines of houses.

The beautiful faces say lines that are provocative or seem to resonate with some meaning, or then they'll say things that sound like empty posturing. What does von Trier intend? Does he want this to hang together or was he just playing with ....

Unfortunately, I had to watch it on dvd in sections because my sister's family came when I was 3/4 of the way through. I watched some while I was tensely waiting for them to arrive. I watched the final hour last night, just before I had to take it back to the store or pay another day's fine. So it wasn't optimal viewing conditions.

Usually I go to Rotten Tomatoes and devour as many reviews as I can. Or no, just the good ones. I read the Salon reviewer and the NY Times and the Wash. Post (they leave their reviews up). I love to read smart commentary on a film. But with Dogville I don't want my head filled with ideas about the movie till I've made up my own mind.

I also saw Knocked Up last night. I loved it. I found it very moving, and not even in the big moments, but just the sweetness of the guy, Ben, and the woman's incredibly good-sportsmanlike decision to love him.

Or Here She Is Here

Remember?

Is It Grapes?

Remember that character in Sideways who left her old life and went up to northern California and picked grapes after her divorce? And then discovered her love of wine and went back to college to study agriculture, which would allow her to learn more about grapes and wine?

I really liked that character. She seemed very grounded.

They Had Plastic Cars

I finally saw The Lives of Others. The first 40 minutes or so are riveting. The film shows details of life under grim socialist control (I don't mean socialist control is ipso facto grim, but it's grim in this case) with what one assumes is vivid realism -- deadening facts about surveillance, interrogation, eavesdropping, blacklisting, even torture, all pile up in one monolithically grey slab. But the life of an artist still exists, with its warmth and drunken parties -- though the hero of the film, a writer, is quietly co-opted, compared to his friends.

Anyway, a little before halfway through the movie, the harsh Stasi guy who is head of the surveillance of the charismatic playwright [spoilers ahead], does a little thing to interfere with his team's own operation. Just a little thing that ensures the playwright catches the party head hitting on his (the writer's) girlfriend. I thought that was fabulous -- the Stasi guy was disillusioned about what he discovered was his unofficial goal -- not digging out a real enemy of the state, but helping his boss "score," so he subtly interfered.

But then the same guy gets very involved listening and watching this couple. What happens but that his bad old communist heart softens. Twinkly music! It's like Disney has taken over.

At this point I felt a part of myself check out. I was still involved with the couple's fate and the horrible arm-twisting dilemmas facing them. Also there's a great view into pre-Glasnost East Berlin (I've never even seen post-Glasnost West Berlin). But it started to feel sentimental and therefore unrealistic. The Stasi guy is emotionally stunted, therefore he lives in a stark spear of a building that itself embodies depersonalized characterlessness. The artist has a great, lyrically beautiful apartment in a beautiful street. Why not? you might say. It makes sense. The artist would know beauty and live somewhere beautiful. But it felt too programmatic. The Stasi guy was so friendless he couldn't withstand all the real humanity he was eavesdropping on (the writer and his actress girlfriend have a lot of sex). Instead of that making him harder, as you might expect, it melted him. It's not unbelievable to me that he'd feel sympathy or even try to subvert the operation. But the way it's filmed is distressingly Robin Williams-like. There's a sense that a really adult perspective has vanished while a very nice story takes over. Notwithstanding it ends very sadly.

When I walked outside onto drizzly Broadway at Columbus Circle, I felt that the awful secret of living under the capitalist system is how lonely we are. But no one is spying on that, no one is paying any attention.

Let's Hear It For Albania