Blog From The Bench

Some of the actors in Dogville return for Manderlay, but are woefully underused. Bacall, Jeremy Davies (Solaris) and Chloe Sevigny (The Brown Bunny) return for brief glimpses, and the major players this time are Wilhelm (Danny Glover, Saw), an older member of the town, and Timothy (Isaac de Bankole, Coffee and Cigarettes), a younger, more rebellious town member.

The film was introduced by Jacob Holdt, whose photos can be seen at the end of Dogville and return for Manderlay. Holdt says that the film is about the Iraq War, which Von Trier doesn't exactly say a recent Guardian interview. Holdt also went on to say that there was a scene that may have been inspired by the Abu Ghraib scandal, and it's not hard to see which seen inspired that.

I like Von Trier's work, and have watched his films since Breaking the Waves, which was one of the more amazing film experiences I'd seen. But now, even though he uses much of the same cast and the same production ideas from Dogville (using a sound stage to depict a town), but as opposed to Dogville, which included a fantastic performance by Kidman, Howard doesn't have much to work with here. John Hurt, who narrated the first film, reprises his role here, but plays a more active role, perhaps because the story was listless and without direction. There is no startling final act that his other films have had, the big surprise at the end of the movie wasn't really one to begin with.