Revenge - at an affordable cost.

Lars von Trier has gone out of the way, in several of his films, to demonstrate that story and acting are the things which keep a great film standing tall on two feet. DOGVILLE, shot entirely on a sound stage, with mere implications of its fictional setting of a Rocky Mountain township is definitely reflective of Von Trier's endless pursuit to minimalize all the distractions that cinematography, costume and lighting might bring. His beliefs as written in his manifesto Dogma 95 illustrate his desire to boil down film to its bare minimum. DOGVILLE is a painful story. A woman with a past, Grace, as played brilliantly by Nicole Kidman, drifts into the 15-person township of Dogville where she seeks to take refuge from gangsters who are hunting her down. In the course of her stay, she falls in love with the village dreamer, Tom, and brings a new sort of happiness to the sleepy citizens. Everyone admits that the quality of life is exceptionally enhanced by Grace's presence. She makes a home for herself and becomes an essential part of the town. She lives a warm, giving existence that seeks to see the best in everyone.



Soon the cordiality peels away and Grace is savagely raped by the village grocer. Repeatedly, she is threatened and blackmailed by all the men in the town, who threaten to turn her in. Ironically, Tom is the only who has not slept with her, and yet he is the most powerless. The town attach a heavy chain around her neck so that she cannot escape. They force her to work as a slave. Tom sees no end to this cruelty, and to the threatening of his own reputation, unless he calls the gangsters to retrieve her. Unbeknownst to anyone, she is the daughter of a high powered Mob. Grace has a though-provoking conversation with her father, played by James Caan, as to what the qualities of mercy, arrogance and human nature are. She makes excuses for the townspeople, as she has throughout the entire film, saying that they don't know any better and they are simply abiding by their nature. As she takes one final walk around town, seeing the faces of the children who have leered at her, seeing the faces of the men who have raped her, the women who have not defended her, and finally the face of a love that abandoned her, she decides to go back to her father. She decides that Dogville cannot exist. She watches as the gangsters murder every child, baby, every person. She takes Tom's life with her own hands.

As she watched the town burn down (and it wasn't even real fire, it was, like, just alot of orange light on a soundstage), I was totally relieved. She got revenge! She got her day! She was beyond embarrassment, beyond used, beyond scorn. And here she was able to finally tear these people down. It is an strange way to turn the story around. A strange way to even tell a story. But there was something entirely relatable. We all wish we had the power to annihilate those who have hurt us. And sadly, in some way, we all wished that there was some Deus Ex Machina to swoop down and blow up the people who do nothing but add pain to life itself.

All I can say is, revenge is not the way to go. If you can afford it, your soul must contain very little in the first place. Yet, there are wounds inflicted on us for which we're ready to avenge and take morbid consequences for.

The film has left me pondering many things.