Dancer in the Dark.
Last night, I saw Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark. I am still confused which one I liked better, this or Breaking the Waves, I will see Breaking the Waves again soon. Dancer in the Dark has some very sublime moments. Its more emotional but less depressing than Breaking the Waves. I plan to write about it later in detail. For now see this video of the song titled 'I've seen it all' by recording star Björk, who stars as all-good Selma in the film, which is the part of the von Trier trilogy where the heroine remains innocent and saintly despite her actions.
In the DVD, we got to see two more versions of this song, one with longer cuts and the other one with very rapid cuts (especially towards the end). For me long shots work better. Also, this song is filmed using 100 cameras which are fixed at different spots and with few handheld cameras for close-ups and the quality of the later being better than the 100 digicams, was digitally distorted to match with that of digicam's. Lars von Trier talks in a documentary called '100 Cameras' that this experiment didn't work as they expected and explains why. Although this is not the best song of the movie in my opinion, but the most popular one and available online. I liked the 'next to last' song better, I need to see the film few more times to settle on my favorite though. I longed and longed for a song on 'Mum's the word', an idea which is so pivotal to the film as the basic motif of faith and goodness.
4 comments:
A small suggestion if its okie..
From the post above I can just understand that you saw a movie called Dancer in the Dark. And also that you are comparing it with another movie Breaking the Waves. I sincerely don't know anything about both the movies. When i try to get in to know what it has ... I think I dont have anything to know about both of them in this post.
I would suggest you to write about the story in short might be like a short story of 100 words and then go about the other things... :)
I actually didn't like it much, though I have now seen it two times, both times on big screen. von trier lost me somewhere in the middle, and all it remained was an intriguing experiment.
Breaking the Waves in a sense is more personal film and I felt he was more "present" there. In this film he was doing some experiments in detached manner. he didn't really care for the subject or the characters, that's what I felt.
I love that song, thanks for putting the link...
whats the "next to last" song that you are talking of, is it the one when she sings walking to the gallows?
Indrajith, you have a very valid point. I was planning to write a bigger post on Dancer in the Dark, so I saved the description for that, just linked to imdb. I will do it soon :)
Alok, I really liked this film, I thought it was more than just an intriguing experiment. There are several scenes which are just marvellous. The songs were very well mixed with the film. I liked Bjork's performance and the final count-up !
If you remember, Selma didnt like the last songs of musicals because thats where it all ends, she liked 'next to last' song and used to leave the film before the last song. I was referring to that. Also the hanging song is called 'next to last' song in the DVD menu. For Selma it was the 'next to last' song of the film because there is one more song in the end credits which she didnt live to listen. She left the film before the last song ;)
okay, I hadn't thought of it that way. yes it makes sense.
that last scene was very well done and the thought of mixing it with a song!!
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