Dogville at 20: On the Maddening Descent into Womanhood

There is nothing quite like Lars Von Trier’s Dogville. Formally, it is constructed like a low-budget theatre piece, rooms marked with white paint on a dark soundstage, walls and doors and windows rendered translucent; a boundaryless world, stretching out and up. It is a markedly restrained way of holding together this A-list cast, with the skeletal construction and actors’ commitment making for a disconcertingly intimate experience. Then there is the position of the imagined town of Dogville, literally pinned between shadowy space, but narratively balanced on a mountain ledge, with craggy rocks on one side and a winding road on the other. It is a strange, uncomfortable (and fictional) corner of this country.

Grace (played by Nicole Kidman, in a career-best turn) wanders into the town, unaware of its context. She arrives as a graceful anomaly against an ugly backdrop. In many ways this mimicked Kidman’s functionality on the set, a supernova whose star was steadily ascending, stranded in Sweden in an atypical filming setup (absent of any trailers, with no makeup or hair stylists). Dogville followed her high-profile divorce from mega-star Tom Cruise, and with it she broke the pattern of her extremely famous life. Her public standing lent Grace’s ethereal character an otherworldly weight. Her blonde hair shines against an inky stretch, the only thing not swallowed by shades of grey and brown; her fur coat is a soft cloud floating around the harsh edges of the rocky inset.

Early into her stay she has an unnerving conversation with the curmudgeonly Chuck (Stellan Skarsgård) – the only townsperson to be openly antagonistic towards her early on. "This town is rotten from the inside out" he warns, his body held rigid with a bubbling hostility. There is nothing concrete to prove that he is right. At this point in the story, the town has cautiously embraced her, tucking Grace away in its mysterious alleys, defending her against the angry gangsters that have rolled into town at inopportune moments. But the solidity of his assertion and the certainty of his delivery colour this place in an ominous shade, one that only grows clearer and more defined across Dogville’s runtime.

After volunteering her time and skills in exchange for people’s protection, the citizens of this town turn on Grace, for ill-defined reasons. She goes from amiably unloading stock into the shop, harvesting apples from the orchard, turning the pages of the church organist’s (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) sheet music, to being chained up, her body used by men to satisfy their depraved, sexual urges. Such violent redirection is explained away in snippets of narration; "But everything had changed a little yet again" a disembodied voice (John Hurt) explains at one point. "And Dogville underwent another one of those little changes of light" the voice surmises at a later point. Dogville is a mythical representation of the world, and like a boa constrictor its nature is to wrap around Grace, ensnaring her before choking her (literally, with a hand-crafted, metal collar). Like all great art this arc is purposely non-specific, analogous to different aspects of life and culture, bound by stark, alarming images. But among other things, Grace’s tortuous journey feels bound up with the experience of growing into womanhood under the strictures of patriarchy.

Chloë Sevigny plays Liz Henson, a daughter of Dogville and the only eligible young woman in the town. Sevigny has made a career of lending her onscreen characters a chic, graceful ease, born from her offscreen "it girl" status, and Liz is no different; she is beautiful and aloof, eyes downcast, smirk playing at her mouth. Early on, in a moment of disarming honesty, she admits to Grace that she is grateful for this new woman’s arrival, effectively distracting the young men away from her. While Von Trier has earned a reputation for his depictions of onscreen misogyny, this is an intriguingly honest appraisal of women and their relationship to being watched, a phenomenon that is already strikingly apparent in the barebones construction of the set. Every interaction plays out against this one-way mirror, and while the audience may initially be uncomfortable with their observational position, they settle into its unwieldy shape quickly. Girlhood, like film watching, is a process of negotiating voyeurism and despite Von Trier’s many misgivings, he seems to know that.

Despite this acknowledgement, Liz eventually turns on Grace, berating her and abusing her like the rest of the town. This too is proof of the journey from girl to woman, which is fraught with chaos and social cannibalism. There is nothing Grace could have done to stave off such a reaction – her outsider status is unshakeable, a skin she cannot shed. Yet our position as viewers has been compromised over the course of these rigorous three hours. Grace is not admirable (as she orders everyone’s killing), nor is she even a survivor (as she is subsumed into her father’s gang organisation); she is a lonely woman on the outskirts of something she once knew. And in the end, Dogville is left desolate and charred–a true reflection of its hero.

"Dogville" is streaming on Mubi.