MANDERLAY: art and artifice

willem (danny glover) is not who he seems in manderlay.

manderlay is lars von trier's follow up to dogville, and if you saw the latter film, then you know what you're in for: a sound stage with chalk markings and seemingly arbitrarily selected props, minimalist mise en scene, hand-held camera, formalism, barry lyndon-esque voice over, gratuitous socratic method, misogyny, fundamentalism, jump cuts, lack of continuity, sexual tension, pretentious william hurt foresight, foreskin, chapters, grace, slavery, hegel, marx and rousseau and all that shit.

this time around, grace is played by bryce dallas howard, and she doesn't quite fill nicole kidman's shoes. this isn't entirely howard's fault: this time, grace is gullible and spoiled, unlike the vulnerable but foolishly idealistic and dignified grace of dogville.

the storylines are also similar: grace stumbles upon a small community--a 1930s plantation that still keeps slaves--and she liberates the slaves and tries to "educate" them to the ideas of free will and democracy. the premise is both an allegory of imperialism, specifically the united states in iraq, and a case study of oppression and indoctrination.

last night, i was reading an old '70s kubrick interview just after he made 2001. he spoke of how the more cinema retains its three-act structure and strives to emulate theatre, the more the potential of cinema is squandered. this is definitely the case with manderlay.

von trier throws away his talents, and the film is a trifle experiment at best. he's a master of craft, but has a history of fetishistically imposing restrictions on his filmmaking--sacrificing art for sake of artifice. everyone knows dogville and manderlay were shot on sound stages without proper sets--people open doors that aren't there, but they squeak and you hear the knobs turn; water rushes through an aqueduct, but you can't see any of it. the result of this artifice is twofold: on one hand, by stripping away a character's environment, you have a unique, unfettered insight into character; on the other hand, you have something that's intrinsically non-cinematic.

it's a lars von trier film so, of course, something inevitably will go tragically wrong. in manderlay, the slaves are freed, but the plantation is in a dust bowl, and a wicked storm wipes out their annual crop. the storm sequence is a reminder of why von trier can be such a compelling filmmaker. the sun turns psychedelic orange, then hazy ... and the storm passes through and the beautiful golden sand whips through the air while grace surveys the scene and timothy, a rebellious and calculating slave, rides his horse through the fields in attempt to salvage the harvest's seedlings. this scene recalls the innovative camera work in zentropa and left me longing for more artistry and less instances of experimental gambit.

the crops are ruined and, while everyone pulls together and eventually produces a lucrative harvest, grace's vision of manderlay becoming an ideal democracy unravels. hegel's master/slave analogy is by no means inappropriate: indeed, the slave has the power because they give the master their identity.

and, of course, there are the more obvious criticisms of america's culture of oppression, namely how americans bury their history as rajah of the west and, almost schizophrenically, embrace the shortcomings of institutions like democracy and free enteprise. there is no in american history for a historical-materialism account of social evolution.

in the end, those guilty are not so because they're black or white, rich or poor, but instead simply because they are american. this is a bold indictment, convoluted by von trier's roundabout way of telling a story. it's a tough film to watch and i can only recommend it if you're down for some cinematic masochism. C+.