Dancer in the Dark - Criticism

I have just seen "Dancer in the Dark", starring Bjork. I was told to go prepared because it would devastate me. And in the end I was crying so much, so badly! If any of you intend to watch it, go with a box full of tissues : you'll need them, trust me.

I will start by my feelings first and then I will try to develop an analysis of the movie. I beg your pardon if my analysis is deficient and the terms not very accurate, but I ask you for patience while I work on improving my skills.

But I don't want to leave the impression that I didn't like it. Much by the contrary. Ironic, in an extremely sad way. I think Lars von Trier did a beautiful work in there and I would classify it either in the Psychoanalytical Model and Ideological Model.

There is a sweet, sad, slight irony in Selma's (Bjork) passion for musicals. One can feel the sarcasm implied in that and the critic to the American musicals from the 50's (which I was a huge fan for years). Haven't you ever thought about how funny it is that nothing goes bad in the musicals? That everybody, from nothing, starts dancing and singing, while this in real life would never happen? Don't you feel sometimes "complacent" with the idea that, in musicals, nothing ever ends bad and everything is good in the end? On how everything is so fake, so superficial, so light, so slight... Beauty carries in itself the lightness and the weight of the superficiality.
Coming back to the movie - marriages in which people don't really get to know each other; cowardice; how we, the society, punish those who don't play by our selfish and cynical games. How we have no mercy for those who dreams. How beautiful the escapes the human being is able to create to run from a reality that is heavier than she/he can carry. How appearances can defeat. It's a mirror of a society - no, not only the American society - ANY society. It's a human nature behavior, not a political one. Relationships of love, lies, friendship. Deep and true love. Cynical, lame, poor love. Marriages supported by illusions. Illusions that help to carry on life. Dreams that will never come true. Abnegation.

Most of all, it works with all people's feelings of fair/unfair, despair, fear, generousity; the viewer feels angry and sad - the movie works with one of the strongest concepts of love modern society has: mother's love. Nobody doubts it. Can it be considered now a taboo? No, maybe I'm just tripping here. But certainly it has an impact on a person's feelings: every thing concerning the ideas of Family, Mother's love, love, marriage, friendship and Justice can be understood easily, no matter where.
Also, I see critics on the Judiciary system, that can be very deficient and how the Death Penalty should be revised - not applied.
That prison's wards are people with feelings and that sometimes friendship can come from there. At least, respect. And how human beings can recognize themselves in some situations, like when two mothers talk about their love for their children.
There is another irony: the neighbor (asshole!) is a cop. The corruption and dishonesty of the police. The consumption fever, the desire for stuff that make people lose their sense of values, make them cross the boundaries between good and bad.

The movie has many parts with strange musicals: instead of happy songs like in the normal musicals, they have extremely sad songs (Bjork's voice contributes a lot in this term!), which composes a kind of weird scene, weird but not less poetic. Poetic. Beautiful. Sad. Instead of making you feel good (as it seems to be the idea of the musicals), it makes you feel uncomfortable, because you know there is an element that is out, that doesn't fit. SHE doesn't fit. SHE is real. Not a movie. Not a movie she saw when she was a little girl. She carries life as in a musical. Irreal. The strange musical reaches its purpose of disturbing, bothering... because you can totally feel the FAKENESS of it, the IRREALITY of it... hard to explain.
The musicals of the movie are disturbing, and this is not a coincidence. They appear in some strange moments, just like the old musicals. They appear in the most unlikely places, just like the oldies. It's such a critic to the old musicals and their lack of deepness, their lack of reality!

How she always has something green to dress - HOPE. Yeah, she definitely lives by hope. And how the colors are more vivid in her dreams, contrasting with the reality, in which the lights are more pale, less bright, more to a gray tone. In her dreams, you can tell that the red and green tones are a little brighter than the others. But, one thing should be noticed: the neighbor's wife's colors are always bright. At least they seemed so to me. Because her world is not real, is like a dream. She is kept away from the roughness of reality, like if she lived in a dream. Maybe that 's why her colors are more vivid and she is always with a beautiful tune of blue.
And the way the camera moves - sometimes it gives you the sensation of a home made film - the angles the camera uses, the way it moves.... sometimes you can feel the tension, just by the way the camera moved and the editing was done... like in the scene in which Bill gives Selma a ride. You can feel that tiny little wire of tension, linking both characters, both in the same wire of despair.

Oh, and I can't forget how it shows the irony of the Communism and the Capitalism. For me it's very clear in the movie this dicotomy... how Selma recalls the times when she was a l ittl e girl in Czechoslovakia and how she used to think how the USA must be wonderful, because she saw in an American movie people eating candies from a can.... how the communist system can be harsh, sad. And she says that it is a good way of living, by sharing. And of course, people critize her. In my point of view, the movie has a left-wing tune.

But the most important, at last, is the endless love of a mother for her son. I wasn't able to analyse the screenplay. I was to touched, crying too much to be able to analyse that.