Dancer in the Dark

I have to give a word of warning right off the bat. Lars Von Trier films are not for everyone. He never shies away from showing you gritty reality (even though in this film he leans towards fantasy). I don't mean violence or sex, just raw emotions. His films are emotional tear-jerkers, but not in the sense of a Hollywood tear-jerker, i.e., a film that is overly sentimental. He's definitely a realist, which is why this film surprised me so much because it contains musical numbers depicting the fantasy life of the main female character, played by the Icelandic musician Björk. (My film prof says that the musical numbers reflect the mental reality of Björk's character, instead of reflecting how out of touch she is with real life. I hadn't taken it that far, and actually I think the film does both things, which is part of why it's so powerful.) I'll admit that the musical numbers were interesting, but didn't click with me. I understood the contrast they provided, but thought that the hand-held, rawly lit, Dogme 95 style was so counter to my conceptions of how musicals should be that they threw me out of the story enough to be irritated by them. Which means this is a film I'll need to see twice...if I can get up the nerve to do so! The plot is hard to describe in one sentence, but focuses on a woman going blind, but still working in a factory to save enough money to give her son the operation he will need because the blindness is hereditary.

year: 2000
length: 140 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168629/combined