The closed and old American town breaks into a mysterious woman, Grace (Nicole Kidman). She is beautiful and kind, and is escaping the gangsters. The town's writer Tom urged the villagers to keep the woman and let her escape the town for the time being. However, the condition was that Grace would have to do all kinds of farm work to pay it back. People agreed, but soon discovered that Grace was a wanted fugitive. Everyone wanted to drive Grace away, and finally promised that if she worked harder, she would be able to stay here.
Grace worked day and night, and it was difficult to escape the unfortunate things. A townsman raped Grace after a police roundup. The dirty thing began: people began to insult her casually, even Tom, also unveiled the mask of kindness, Grace became a dog in the town, working, suffering, and the good heart gradually changed. The people in the town could not imagine that the mysterious life of this woman had made the insult at this moment a disaster for him.
A stunning work by Ras von Trier. Nicole Kidman reaches the pinnacle of acting skills and appearance in the film, and the stage set not only achieves a distancing effect, but also perfectly fits the film's characteristics as a microcosm of human nature, an experiment of thought and a social fable. Absent soundtracks, indifferent narration throughout, frequent perspectives on God, and symbols and metaphors that point to Christianity. The film's ideological subversion is heinous and terrifying.
Through the creative and minimalist scene structure, all protective occlusions are removed, just as the director removes all the disguises of the characters in the film and spreads out the darkest and dirtiest side of human nature to the audience. At the end of the film, when I heard the phrase "kill the child first and let the mother watch", the resentment that had been suppressed in my heart for more than an hour finally erupted like a gushing spring. If I want to talk about the shortcomings, it must also be that the massacre ended too quickly, because I wanted to see the expression of the mother of the children when they were killed one by one, so that I could relieve the hatred. Yes, the world would be better without this village.
It seems that all the plots are paving the way for the dialogue between the heroine and her father in the car before blackening. In fact, I think the heroine has done a little too much behind, but perhaps this is the director's intention: the audience has established enough empathy with the heroine to experience the pleasure of violence with the heroine in the process of slaughtering the town. Echo the evil of the townspeople with the evil of the audience's human nature. Expand the scope of Dogtown from the screen to beyond the screen.
Grace finally understood that the person who was truly arrogant was herself. She pressed the moral yardstick heavily on her shoulders, thinking that forgiving others was the greatest good, thinking too well of the world, and ultimately harming herself and others. The way to punish the woman who had insulted her was to kill her children in front of her, just as she had been tortured. It doesn't matter at all whether this is correct or not, because that's fairness. ”
Although the whole film lasts nearly 3 hours, the narrative is surprisingly compact, and even constantly uses narration to help the audience understand the plot; the concept is still relatively elaborate, but there are some logical points in common sense. The ending is wonderful, Grace left dog town, but the outside world is not "dog town"? It's not the place that's disgusting, it's the people! When a person cannot be changed with morality and tolerance, then use power to eliminate him.
It seems to me that this is a work of radical criticism of capital and human nature, and I am very happy to see a work that can shine into the darkest parts of human nature. The sublimation at the end is even more subtle. Lu Xun said, silence! Silence! Not to erupt in silence, but to perish in silence. And Grace chose the former, which was a satisfactory ending and a sad ending, standing in the middle of the two, supported by a balanced fulcrum, everything seemed so just right.
There are windows without doors, and there is light without seeing the exterior, symbolizing the great uneasiness in the heroine's heart. Human nature doesn't stand the test, and so does the people of the town, and so does Grace. Human nature is inherently evil, and even the kindest people will be vulnerable in front of reality, which is similar to the director's previous work "Dancer in the Dark". But this work is higher than "Dancer in the Dark", because "Dancer in the Dark" is at least half beautiful, and this one may have, but only a little.
"I told you to listen, and you were only looking to defend yourself." And soon, the people who said this were in league with them. In this monotonous setting that can be tedious in its narrative, the film dissects human nature and greed to the fullest. The film revolves around the word "dog", with multiple depictions of the dog, the name of the dog town, and what happened to Grace.
The final conversation with his father cleared up the confusion of these three hours. Why didn't she resist? Why is she so numb to the ugliness of human nature? Because she is "arrogant". She hated her father's arrogance and she was the most arrogant one, so arrogant that she couldn't see human nature clearly and couldn't make correct judgments. And that led to this tragedy. What is seen in the middle is disgusting and infuriating, but fortunately this grievance was finally calmed down and the accumulated resentment was vented.
In the end, there is a devil living in everyone's heart, but it has not yet waited for the time to appear, Las von Trier uses the devil to attract the attention of the viewer, Grace's kindness is slowly destroyed in the last three hours, the final entanglement is a difficult scenery, the director reveals that he is afraid that the audience does not understand the sense of anxiety, but I am still deeply impressed by the spirit of such experimentation and the portrayal of human nature in the plot.
In the long and trivial preparation, just a little bit of normal ethics and sympathy, was pulled into the director's moral circle, in the face of the heavy and cruel reality, you do not even have the opportunity to refute, in the other world without obstacles and no bottom line, even the exercise of goodness has become a transaction, people would rather wear the mask of hypocrisy and use up despicable means, but also to fight for the dirty so-called compensation not to let themselves suffer, everyone cares only about themselves, All are unarmed murderers standing on their moral high ground
A virgin who wants to bear all the humiliation with her so-called goodness, a bunch of beasts who have done all the bad things but always feel that they are getting something in return, a father who sits on power like a dictator. In fact, we have no right to blame everyone in the play, because human nature is the same, but there is no chance to show it. Not all kindness is kindness, and when the whole town dies one by one, they are all paying for Nicole's kindness.
The good and evil of human nature are inexplicable, people are very complicated, I thought at first that Grace was going to let them go, I was really mad, so good daddy is not good to threaten, what else to hesitate? Revenge! But when it really happens, it's a bit unbearable. But I know that, in any case, when they did that at the time, they were doomed, and people are responsible for their actions, and sometimes there may be no right or wrong and good and evil, but there is cause and effect.
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