Comprehensive information and links about Dogville

Dogville is a 2003 movie written and directed by Lars von Trier, starring Nicole Kidman, Paul Bettany, Lauren Bacall, Stellan Skarsgård and James Caan, among others. It is a parable that uses an extremely minimal set to tell the story of Grace (Kidman), a fugitive from mobsters, who arrives in the small town of Dogville and is provided refuge in return for physical labor.

The film is the first in the (2007).

The film was in competition for the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival but Gus van Sant's is narrated by John Hurt in nine chapters and takes place on a stage with minimalist scenery. Some walls and furniture are placed on the stage, but the rest of the scenery exists merely as white painted outlines which even have big labels on them; for example, the outlines of gooseberry bushes have the text "Gooseberry Bushes" written next to them. While this form of staging is common in black box theaters, it has never been attempted on film before. The bare staging serves to focus the audience's attention on the acting and storytelling, and also reminds them of the film's artificiality. As such it is heavily influenced by the theatre of Bertolt Brecht.

The movie was shot in a studio in Trollhättan, Sweden.

Prologue

Dogville is a very small town in America near the Rocky Mountains, with a road leading up to it, but nowhere to go but the mountains. The film begins with a prologue in which we meet the two dozen or so citizens of the town. They are portrayed as lovable, good people with small flaws which are easy to forgive.

The town is seen from the point of view of Tom (Paul Bettany), an aspiring writer who procrastinates by trying to get his fellow citizens together for regular meetings on the subject of "moral rearmament." It is clear that Tom wants to succeed his aging father as the moral and spiritual leader of the town.

It is Tom who first meets Grace (Nicole Kidman), who is on the run from gangsters who apparently shot at her. Grace, a beautiful but modest woman, wants to keep running, but Tom assures her that the mountains ahead are too difficult to pass. As they talk, the gangsters approach the town, and Tom quickly hides Grace in a nearby mine. One of the gangsters asks Tom if he has seen the woman, which he declines, and so the gangster offers him a reward and hands him a card with a phone number to call in case Grace shows up.

Tom decides to use Grace as an "illustration" in his next meeting -- a way for the townspeople to prove that they are indeed committed to community values, and willing to help the stranger. They remain skeptical, so Tom proposes that Grace should be given a chance to prove that she is a good person. Grace is accepted for two weeks in which, as Tom explains her after the meeting, she has to convince the townspeople to like her.

On Tom's suggestion, Grace offers to do chores for the citizens -- talking to the lonely, blind Jack McCay (Ben Gazzara), helping to run the small shop, looking after the children of Chuck (Stellan Skarsgård) and Vera (Patricia Clarkson), and so forth. After some initial reluctance, the people accept her help in doing those chores that "no really needs" but which nevertheless make life better, and so she becomes a part of the community. After the two weeks are over, everyone votes that she should be allowed to stay.

In tacit agreement, she is expected to continue her chores, which she does gladly, and is even paid small wages in return. Grace even begins to make friends with some of the members of town, including Jack Mackay, an old blind man who pretends that he is not blind. Grace tricks him into admitting that he is blind, earning his respect.

But when the police arrive to place a "Missing" poster with Grace's picture and name on it on the church, the mood darkens slightly. Should they not cooperate with the police?

Still, things continue as usual until the 4th of July celebrations. After Tom awkwardly admits his love to Grace and the whole town expresses their agreement that it has become a better place thanks to her, the police arrive again to replace the "Missing" poster with a "Wanted" poster. Grace is now wanted for participation in a bank robbery. Everyone agrees that she must be innocent, since at the time the robbery took place, she was doing chores for the townspeople every day.

Nevertheless, Tom argues that because of the increased risk to the town now that they are harboring someone who is wanted as a criminal, Grace should provide a quid pro quo and do more chores for the townspeople within the same time. At this point, what was previously a voluntary arrangement takes on a slightly coercive nature as Grace is clearly uncomfortable with the idea. Still, being very amenable and wanting to please Tom, Grace agrees.

At this point the situation worsens, as with her additional workload, Grace inevitably makes mistakes, and the people she works for seem to be equally irritated by the new schedule -- and take it out on Grace. The situation slowly escalates, with the male citizens making small sexual advances to Grace and the female ones becoming increasingly abusive. Even the children are perverse: Jason, the perhaps 10-year-old son of Chuck and Vera, asks Grace to spank him, until she finally complies after much provocation. Soon thereafter Chuck returns home and rapes Grace, as it becomes obvious that she is hardly able to defend herself against exploitation.

After Tom discusses the possibility of escape with her, Grace is blamed by Vera both for spanking Jason and for being raped by Chuck. In revenge, Vera threatens Grace with destroying the porcelain figurines created by the town shop that she had acquired with the little wages she was given, Grace begs for mercy, reminding Vera of how she taught her children about stoicism. In response, Vera challenges Grace to stand up with out dropping a tear while she destroys the first two of the porcelain figurines. Grace not being able to hold her tears, Vera destroys the remaining figurines. The symbol of her belonging in the town gone, she now knows that she must leave. With the help of Tom and Ben, the freight driver, she attempts escape in his apple truck, only to find herself raped by Ben ("It's not personal. I just...have to take due payment, that's all") and then returned to the town.

The town agrees that they must not let her escape again. The money that she used to pay Ben had been taken by Tom from his father, and Grace is blamed for the theft. Tom refuses to come forward because, he explains, this is the only way he can still protect Grace without people getting suspicious. At this point, Grace's status as slave is finally confirmed as she is collared and chained to a large iron wheel which she must carry around with her, too heavy to allow her to move anywhere outside the town. More humiliatingly still, a bell is attached to her collar and announces her presence wherever she goes. Suffice it to say that at this point, she becomes both work and sex slave for the town. Tom is the only male citizen of the town that does not rape her.

This culminates in a late night general assembly in which Grace —following Tom's suggestion— relates calmly all that she has endured from everyone in town. Embarrased and in complete denial, the townspeople finally decide to get rid of her. Tom, at first on Grace's side, becomes during the course of the night the most passionate advocate for her dismissal. He ends up personally calling the mobsters, and later proposes to an unanimous approval that Grace be locked up in her shack.

When the mobsters finally arrive, they are welcomed cordially by Tom and an impromptu committee of other townspeople. Grace is then freed and we finally learn who she really is: the daughter of a powerful gang leader who ran away because she could not stand her father's dirty work. Her father confronts her in his big limousine and tells her that she is arrogant for not holding others to the same high standards she holds herself to. At first she refuses to listen, but as she looks again upon the town and its people, she is compelled to agree: she would have to condemn them to the worst possible punishment if she held them to her own standards, and it would be inhumane not to do so.

So she accepts to be again her father's daughter, and immediately demands that the whole town be eliminated. In particular, she gives the order to have Vera look at the murder of each of her children, having been told that it would stop if she can hold back her tears. The film ends in a crescendo of violence, the town being set alight as each citizen of the town —women and children included— is brutally murdered by the gangsters on direct order from Grace herself —except for Tom, whom she kills personally.

The film is set in the 1930s, and the small dead-end town of Dogville can be a symbol for any similar town in the United States or, in fact, anywhere. As the fifteen citizens and the children of Dogville are introduced to Grace, they are put to a moral test: Are they willing to save a woman who is quite clearly innocent, and to in effect risk their own lives for her, receiving little more than kindness in return? Grace too is faced with a test: when faced with cruelty from the people of Dogville, can she forgive them because they are poor, or will she seek revenge?

Some have called an allegory based on many elements of the Passion of Christ, and a number of plot twists to provide contemporary relevance, and interesting questions of morality and philosophy. Grace is compared with Jesus, who suffered unjustly at the hands of those he sought to serve. Tom, on the other hand, is compared to the church; while claiming to love Jesus's Grace, he ultimately betrays her — in the movie, he does so with a kiss, a possible reference to Judas's kiss of betrayal — because of his preference for self-righteousness and intellectualism (always seeking another "illustration"). The dialogue between Grace and her father in the car is described as a comparison between the "old-testament" and "new-testament" approaches to morality, with the father representing the brutal justice of the old testament and Grace representing the call to boundless mercy of the New Testament. Some view the brutal ending as posing the question: "What if Jesus were to decide that he had suffered enough at the hands of those who have abused his Grace?"

Some have called an anti-American movie because it seems to imply that America does not care for the weakest members of its society and worse, that they are exploited whenever people think they can get away with it. The images of poverty stricken Americans of different eras flashing over the screen during the closing credits, accompanied by the song "Young Americans" by David Bowie, suggest that the film is in some sense intended to be a comment on American society.

One theme of the film is the difference between altruism and the quid pro quo arrangement set up between Grace and the townspeople. While initially the latter exchange is mutually beneficial, it is increasingly abused by those who hold power. This could be taken as an indictment of capitalism or as a comment on the self-centered nature of human relationships.

To a certain extent, the film also serves to question moral relativism. Grace, it seems, is incapable of passing judgement on any behavior - no matter how reprehensible. To her, all of these behaviors are merely products of circumstance. Her father, who appears later, argues that this is arrogant condescension, and that Grace should expect of others what she expects of herself.

Still others perceive to be an anti-Christian allegory, rather than anti-American, with Grace's "turn the other cheek" forgiveness being rejected in favour of divine vengeance. In this interpretation, the film is a condemnation of "weak" Christians who allow evil to go unchecked, such as during the Second World War.