Dancer in the Dark

MOVIE #1,123 •🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿• 08.24.23 RANKING LARS VON TRIER: #6 [EDITOR’S NOTE: This was one of the first films I watched for my series on Lars von Trier so I reviewed it without the context of his earlier work.] I didn’t know what I was getting into, still don’t know, and — as it grows ever more abundantly clear — will continue to never know. When you hear the word trilogy, you think three, three of a kind, a kind of grouping of three things that should be or feel connected on some level. The first film trilogy that comes to mind? Probably Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. It’s almost always nerd shit. As I close this first chapter in the book of Lars von Trier (the Golden Heart trilogy), I find myself perplexed and in awe, not so much at the technical or traditional aspects of the filmmaking, but at the sheer audaciousness of the process.

This movie, arguably the most famous work of the three if not of LVT’s entire career, is ostensibly a musical but for me to think of it, let alone grade it, by those terms, fills me with dread. It’s an anti-musical as much as anything else. Björk, star of the film and author of said musical numbers, is a much-needed anchor but the non-singer/non-dancer Actors tasked with performing alongside the genius musician are so terrible that it feels as if she’s singing alongside faulty animatronics at a cheap pizza restaurant. It breaches any semblance of good faith one would put in a “musical” right from the get-go, and it’s perfect in every way because of it.

The through-line of this trilogy is that each entry “is about naive heroines who maintain their ‘golden hearts’ despite the tragedies they experience.” And that’s really not debatable. That LVT would deploy such variance in bringing that to life is what truly sold me on the genius of these films taken as a whole. Stylistically and visually, Dancer feels like a merging of the first two movies: rough and off-the-cuff like Idiots but exploding in color like Waves during the musical excursions. If one were to watch these independent of the others, without knowing that the same man made them, they’d likely never see the connections. That’s a masterful use of subtlety. Though there isn’t one damn subtle thing about any of these works on an immediate level. In fact, they work constantly to hit you over the head, potentially offend and leave you swirling with a head full of questions.

Björk, who was sadly turned off by the experience making this film (another story altogether), is outstanding in this. One of the reason the uncanny valley of the musical numbers is such a discordant delight is that it truly feels as if she’s on another planet if not light-years ahead of the culture when it comes to her songwriting. I honestly feel like she’ll be one of the few artists from this time period that humans will talk about if the earth is still around in a couple centuries from now, and her work here is no exception. Early in the film, her character makes a statement that she hates the big last song of a musical because it means that the musical is about to end. It’s a poignant thought on its own, but it comes full circle with the actual big last song of this “musical,” which she sings with a noose around her neck just before being executed…


For thirty years, Men’s Wearhouse founder and executive chairman George Zimmer wowed audiences with his commercial tagline, “You’re going to like the way you look. I guarantee it.” And, three films down, I feel that Lars von Trier could offer a similar marketing campaign for his motion pictures…


But sometimes we need to feel that way, to maintain our own 'golden hearts’.

PS. They’re all 10/10 from here on out, folks. So “ranking” them was especially hard.

ranking lars von trier cont'd
#7 ↩ • ↪ #5

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Dancer in the Dark is a 2000 musical melodrama film written and directed by Lars von Trier. It stars Icelandic musician Björk as a factory worker who suffers from a degenerative eye condition and is saving for an operation to prevent her young son from suffering the same fate. Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Cara Seymour, Peter Stormare, Siobhan Fallon Hogan and Joel Grey also star. The soundtrack for the film, Selmasongs, was written mainly by Björk, but a number of songs featured contributions from Mark Bell and some of the lyrics were written by von Trier and Sjón. It was released on May 17, 2000.