Rating: 
Summary: A movie you will never forget
Review: I was really affected by this movie. I have never seen a movie and got affected so much. It is a GREAT movie
Rating:
Summary: A challenging film, but in the best possible ways
Review: Like all works of art that have dared to push the boundaries of their respective mediums, Dancer in the Dark is a film that is just as widely hated as it is loved. Some critics have lauded the film as a work of brilliant originality, while others have denounced it as pretentious and self-indulgent. Admittedly, this controversy was one of the reasons I was eager to see the film for myself. Well, by the end of this two-and-a-half hour musical-drama, the handful of men and women sitting with me in the small art house theater were either too stunned to speak or so overwhelmed with emotion that they were reduced to fitful sobs. When the credits hit, there was a guarded applause.Sure, von Trier's post-Dogma 95 film still adheres to many of the tenets of that minimalist movement of which he was a cofounder, and in doing so, there are moments in the film that reek of artistic self-importance. But even the most hardened cynic cannot walk out of this film without being affected by the shattering power of Bjork's performance or the ingenious directorial artistry that von Trier evinces in telling her story and, more impressively, in making us care about it. As Selma -- the Czech immigrant factory worker who is slowly losing her eyesight -- Bjork is able to surpass the melodramatic tendencies of the script and piece together a human portrait so honest and poignant that it is nearly impossible to walk out of this film without being haunted by it. Sure, the film deals with tough subject matter and is often quite sad, but I wouldn't call it depressing. For me, the term "depressing" applies to a situation that is devoid of hope or is burdened by the overwhelming weight of hopelessness. Though Dancer in the Dark is about a woman laden with miserable circumstances, which increasingly worsen as the film progresses, von Trier always makes it clear that Selma is actively in control of her destiny. She consciously makes the decisions that lead to the state that we leave her in at the end of the film, and knowing this makes her fate somewhat more bearable. It seems that as the art house/indie film world is gradually blending into the mainstream, and filmgoers are becoming more and more savvy and are expecting more from cinema than just entertainment, people are also becoming overly critical of films to the point that the emotional magic of the movies is slowly being phased out. Dancer in the Dark is a film that is unabashedly outright in its artistic extremes and disarmingly honest in its emotional manipulation, but in the capable hands of gifted, compassionate artists like Lars von Trier and Bjork (who composed and performed the astonishing soundtrack), it is a film that obliterates the restrictive floodgates of contemporary cynicism and allows one to both weep and revel at the delicacy and the intricacies of the human condition.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing Bjorksploitation Musical
Review: Lar von Trier has a new film out. No it has little to do with his brilliant Zentropa, but it does borrow the essence of the central character of Breaking the Waves. However it takes this character and proceeds to put her into a 2 1/2 hour MTV Bjork video. Yes, Mr. Anti-commercial von Trier has stooped to this: a niave virtually blind Czech girl (Bjork) who has a 12-year-old son (Bjork looks barely 12 herself) works doubleshifts in a Washington State pot-making factory to pay for her son's eye operation. What appears to be an amateurish super-8 documentary (but it's intentional...I guess) set in 1964 turns into a combination of Dead Woman Walking and The Sound of Music. Ultra-unbelievable scenario which has a message muddled by useless music and dancing. Only for hardcore Bjork fans. For von Trier fans go back to Zentropa, his one great film.
Rating:
Summary: Ignore the critics...this film is spectacular
Review: I just returned from viewing this film at the local art theatre. I have not been this moved by a film in a long time. Bjork's acting is uncanny! She is definately a super-talented individual. The film direction is maticulously met with great artistic vision, from the choreography to the cinematography. The film is graphic, beyond the reach of most films, and i believe it adequately portrays the horror of death as equally as it portrays the bliss of surrealism. See it in the theatres. If you can't, then wait for the DVD, but i guarantee you that it will make a greater impact on you on the big screen.
Rating: 
Summary: A Wonderful Masterpiece filled With Beautiful Music
Review: I am a huge fan of Bjork's and when I heard about this movie, I originally just wanted to see it because of her. Now that I've seen it, I know it is a masterpiece all in it's own. The beauty of Bjork's songs that really capture how Selma feels draws you closer into the film. I just have one complaint... the camera work is a bit jumpy and if you get motion sickness be wary. Also, this is not Bjork's feature film debut as some say. She was also in the movie "The Juniper Tree". But besides that, everyone should this movie as it is a work of magic.
Rating:
Summary: Intolerance, Citizen Kane, 2001...Dancer In The Dark?
Review: Lars von Trier's masterpiece is nothing less than brilliant, as it begins with a provocative ink blot, and a rising overture produced by the movie's star Bjork, that maps out the vicissitudes of the next two hours. Von Trier's hand-held digital camera rumbles through Selma's(Bjork) drab world - as she is suffering from a degenerative eye disease - and treats the audience to close-ups and zoom shots of the disgruntled or jovial Bjork, a la Bergman. Von Trier's unstable camera is the trade mark of his Dogma 95 movement, which stresses austerity and denies film contrivances. However, what escalates this film beyond other von Trier masterpieces (Breaking The Waves), is its use of over 100 steadi-cams in the filming of Selma's musical fantasies, which are extraordinary. This inextricable blend of camera styles is what makes the film so aesthetically beautiful. The contrived fantastical music skits are impeccably choreographed and balanced perfectly with Selma's abject reality; they are also used to further drive the story or reveal character's emotions. Von Trier seems to be poking fun at the Hollywood musicals, while simultaneously celebrating and paying homage to them. Selma is a character that any dreamer can relate to, and by the finale "Darkness" seems to be the only plausible choice for her, since her musical fantasies were viewed in "Dark" movie theaters where she is most happy. A movie unmatched by any, and unlike anything ever put to celluloid. As seminal as Intolerance, Kane, and 2001? I think so!
Rating:
Summary: Compelling, Heart-breaking, Hauntingly tragic
Review: If you are at all a Bjork fan, you must see this film. Everything about this film is brilliant. The entire cast, the choreography and dance direction, the muscical score. The film takes musical motion pictures in a completely unique direction. I just got home from the theatre and my heart is still in my throat. This film is very heavy and has a tragic ending that may be hard for some audiences to stomach. The film is about a woman working in a factory and taking odd jobs to save every cent she can to pay for an eye operation to save her young son's eyesight. Unbeknownst to him, she is rapidly going blind. She says she has seen all there is to see. She had her son, knowing he would have the same eye disease because she wanted to hold a little baby in her arms. She escapes the sadness of her life by day dreaming she is in a muscial and that there will always be someone there to catch her when she falls. " When I am working in the factory, I like to pretend I am in a musical. In musicals nothing dreadful ever happens" - Selma
Rating:
Summary: An intense, kaleidescopic fantasy of music, hope and tragedy
Review: Lars von Trier's new film begins with a Rorshach-like ink-blot test image that evolves into many things and nothing -- at the same time. It is a unique cinematic moment, one that lingers for several unsettling minutes. The remainder of the film is as powerful, hypnotic and ironic as the image which precedes the two-plus hours of drama and musical. "Dancer In The Dark" follows Selma (Bjork -- in her feature film acting debut), a musical dancer whose eye-blindness is worsening by the day. Her slow descent into visual darkness is accompanied by a slide into the enveloping moral darkness of the all-sighted people around her. Selma can see the world beyond her and around her, but cannot see the world right before her -- in both an optical and symbolic sense. She is trapped, confined by the contradictions of those who seek her solace and comfort. She is manipulated and framed by someone she confides in. When the moment arrives Selma is so loyal to a fault to this particular person that she risks her future in order to stay true to herself. What keeps Selma going is her desire to see life in refreshing, vibrant colors -- in other words, via the rose-colored lenses of the idealistic world that she believes exists. The musical aspect of "Dancer In The Dark" comes on slowly but is rich and alive -- in sharper focus and clarity than the heretofore Dogma95 von Trier trademarks: the drab color, natural light and high-speed edits and camera movement which compose much of this film. Selma could be living in the musical world and dreaming in the drab, reality world she is caught in. Or it could be the other way round. The musical world represents a naivete, a fantasy, an innocence and purity through which Selma lives out her fantasies and desires. She dances in the mind, in the heart and most of all, in the dark. Aspects of this drama/musical are disturbing, not just because of Selma's circumstances, but because she has a pure heart and trustworthy soul, a soul whose foundation is battered but not defeated. Her son, who also has problems seeing things clearly, proves to be the treasured being whom Selma works so hard for. Selma shields her son from the harshness and indignities of the real world and what she does for him is done in the hope that he can see the same world she sees through even clearer "eyes" than her own. The film's visual style is arresting and like all Dogma95 films -- disjointed, full of random imagery. The editing style is effective, adding atmosphere and an authentic feel to the characters. There are two memorable sequences in "Dancer In The Dark," one which follows the film's critical event. The balletic camera work and characters' choreography in this particular sequence has as much to do with the strength of Selma's vision and her fairytale notions about the world's machinations as the images themselves do. Lars von Trier's film parallels several moments in the 1999 film "The Green Mile" and it is interesting to note that actor David Morse plays as prominent a role in "Dancer" as he did in "Mile", though certainly for different reasons. Catherine Deneuve gives von Trier's film great weight and dignity in her role as Kathy, a character who believes she has Selma's best interests at heart. Joel Grey has an impacting cameo in a pivotal scene, while Peter Stormare is endearing as Jeff, a "Sling Blade"-type guardian angel who wants to make Selma happier than she insists she is. Stellan Skarsgaard makes a cameo appearance as a doctor. Most of all though, it is Bjork, who shines with an acting depth that deservedly won her Best Actress honors at the Cannes Film Festival last May. Bjork should be seriously considered for an Oscar nomination in 2001. The Icelandic pop sensation is central to scenes resembling the visual creativity she brings to her own music videos. Bjork also wrote the songs and musical score for "Dancer In The Dark," a film that intrigues, moves, disturbs and impacts in many other emotional and psychological ways.
Rating:
Summary: Compare to "the Passion of Joan of Arc"
Review: Lars Von Trier must have seen The Passion of Joan of Arc and liked it so much that he decided to make a movie (or a trilogy of movies) that parallelled the same female martyrdom. If you have seen the Passion of Joan of Arc, then you have seen a real masterpiece, perhaps the best movie of all time. It's no wonder why Von Trier would want to copy it. In both Carl Dreyer (ironically another Danish director from the 20s)'s film trying to take the material from another country's story (Jeanne d'Arc), the main character is put on interrogation for being criminal when she was in fact more saintly than her interrogators. Falconetti, like Bjork, the main character of Dancer in the Dark, decided never to act again after the traumatic experience. Both Carl and Lars liked to purposefully film from a strange tortured angular way so as to thoroughly torment the viewer. Lars's camera holding technique was more painful to experience, because he sometimes shook the camera, as if it were a home video making me want to practically throw up at times. But in both films, the way that the camera is held, and the scenes are viewed give the viewer more reason to feel sympathy for the main character's plight, (in Bjork's case, that she was blind and poor and a single mother who needed to work to take care of her kid) ...(and in Falconetti's case, that she was imprisoned and humiliated for freeing her country of intruders.) Each character always seemed cornered out, or set aside from whatever reality they had to confront. The depiction of Selma by Bjork was just as honest and heartfelt and raw and real and tormenting to experience as Falconetti's portrayal of Jeanne d'Arc. In both films, the acting is more as if the actors arent's actors but they just let the character of their story possess them and speak through them. Also in both films, the music is incredibly powerful and moving and enhances the emotional situations that both women had to undergo and confront and overcome, even in martyrdom. In DITD, the music is modernly inspired electronic music composed by Bjork and sung by Bjork, and has beats made from normal sounds in the surroundings in the film, whereas in the Passion of Joan of Arc, the music score was only added to the silent movie 50 years afterwards, ...after the film was salvaged from its disappearance in a fire and found in the attic of a Norwegian insane asylum. The Passion of Joan of Arc's music was done by a modern composer as well (Richard Einhorn) and sung by a choir and a female quartet of singers called Anonymous 4. I'm sure that other comparisons can be made, if one views both movies in the same night. My only complaint is that both movies leave you with the feeling that this sacrosaintly behavior from honest, defiant women who dare to step out of the lines and do what their heart, or their spirituality tells them to do, only get squashed in the end. It's a real depressing view of mankind and what devastation we are capable of. Leave it to two Danes to critique American society (in Dancer in the Dark, and Dogville) or tell the story of a French saint who was slandered as a heretic (in the Passion of Joan of Arc.) Carl Dreyer got censored, his film was lost in a fire for 50 years and then found in an insane asylum, only to be restored and upgraded with a soundtrack that he never asked for but which made his film even more powerful. Perhaps Jeanne's spirit was playing tricks on the movie that tried to portray her plight, and that's why it (the film negatives) went up in flames (as did she, in the end) and were lost for 50 years only to be found in an insane asylum (coincidence? ...her interrogators accused her of lunacy and of conspiracy with the devil...like a crazy person, or a witch) and then when the negatives were found, they were treated like a treasure, just as Jeanne was only called a saint hundreds of years after her death. Maybe Von Trier will be just as cursed by the stories he tries to tell, (he tries to talk about America when he's never even stepped foot here, and never probably will) only that his are ficticious stories, and DITD was brought to life only by a fierce force to be reckoned with...a practically pagan and mystical Icelandic woman who can believe wholeheartedly in her character, Selma, and in the apparent reality and gravity of her situation, just as the people of Iceland can seriously believe in elves and gnomes possessing rocks and mountains and rivers. (Icelandic people will build a road around a rock instead of destroying it, because they believe that the gnomes/elves would be disturbed or mad if they destroyed the rock or moved it.) I think that this belief in characters and in spirits is obvious in Bjork's way of acting and being Selma and being true to Selma's plight, ...just as true as Falconetti was to Jeanne d'Arc's plight.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful, utterly devastating movie.
Review: Björk, an accomplished singer from Iceland who is best known for her progressive music, unusual style, and quirky personality, absolutely should have won Academy Awards for the her outstanding score and sublime performance in this phenomenally beautiful, yet utterly sad motion picture. Why she didn't is beyond my capacity for reason, and is a testament to a commercialized Hollywood that rarely bats an eye at outstanding independent filmmaking.
Working beside a knockout cast (including Joel Grey, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, and Stellan Skarsgård), Björk plays Selma, a woman who copes with the increasing difficulties of her life through music. She suffers from a degenerative blindness, which causes her to lose her job - a significant loss, since she had been saving money to pay for an operation that would prevent the same blinding disease from befalling her son. All the while, the cruel world around her works against her undying selflessness, and, in the end, she unfairly pays the ultimate price.
Not since "West Side Story" has music been more of a compliment to a movie than it is in this musical. The music, arranged and composed by Björk (and performed with original, effective choreography), is almost a being in itself, popping in at a moments notice when Selma hears the slightest rhythm of a passing train, a metal press, or even the light scratching of a pencil on paper. It is through music that Selma finds her escape from an increasingly hostile world...and us along with her.
This movie, phenomenally written and directed by Lars von Trier, raises the soul and the spirit, then brings it crashing to the ground as we witness the martyrdom of one of the most stirring and decent characters in recent memory. Yet, despite the inevitable depression you may feel at the movie's end, you will feel fortunate to have even encountered a soul such as Selma in the first place.
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