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Sunday, 29 January 2006 17:05

The quandary that is created by Von Trier is if he is merely condemning America, or if he wants to upset people to make a point.

With Lars Von Trier’s latest cinematic endeavor, there are three basic ideas he wants to get across: (1) America is racist. (2) America will always be racist. (3) There is nothing that America can do to fix its racism. As of late, Von Trier has become the European cinematic voice for America’s problems. This has come in his U. S. of A. trilogy that began with Dogville, continues with Manderlay, and will soon reach its climax with Washington (due in 2007). The quandary that is created by Von Trier is if he is merely condemning America, or if he wants to upset people to make a point.

After having been vilified and subsequently seeking revenge in the small town of Dogville, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard, replacing Nicole Kidman) journeys with her gangster father (Willem Dafoe, replacing James Caan) to the south. Coming upon a Southern plantation still engaging in slavery, Grace decides that it is her place to help free the slaves. With her father’s help (and some gangsters), Grace declares the plantation to be free (except, of course, for the whites who work there) and tells the slaves to make their lives better.

Much to her surprise, the slaves stop doing work and opt to do nothing. Disheartened, she rallies them together to teach them about freedom and democracy. When they finally decide to better themselves, in true Von Trier fashion, only bad things happen. For example, the act of cutting down trees to fix their houses causes a dust storm, which ruins their cotton crop.

Grace comes into trouble when, after teaching the slaves democracy, the town decides to kill a woman who steals food from a dying child. Unhappy with this solution, Grace resorts to violence to make the situation turn out the way she wants it to. Though touching on many more plot points—including a book about how to deal with slaves and Grace’s relationship with one of the slaves—Manderlay boils down to just two ideas: race and democracy.

On the democracy side, Von Trier hits it on the head with his condemnation of America’s forcing of democracy on another country and, when unhappy with the outcome, making their own through violence. Manderlay serves as a beautiful metaphor for America’s involvement in Iraq without being overt (except for maybe when Grace calls the freed slaves “graduate Americans”). It is when he brings up the race card that Von Trier runs into trouble. Instead of dealing with racism on a universal level, he points his shunning finger once again at America without a suggestion of how to solve or end the situation.

Still, the point of Manderlay is to elicit a reaction in the viewer, to make you feel something, positive or negative. In that respect, the film is very successful.

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