Manderlay

I've only seen the film once, but I felt that the most consistent interpretation was strictly about arrogant imperialism. I found myself first seeing through a very direct lens of a slave narrative/American liberal white guilt. This is an easy interpretation that lives on the surface.

The film then transformed into a statement about the presumption that "we" can teach others how to govern when "they" may have a system that works better in their context. The system in Manderlay was not overseer/slave, the system was socialism/communism and each "slave," as Grace saw them, had his or her own specialized role. The inhabitants of Manderlay were free within their system, but Grace was so completely blinded by what her culture had taught her about "freedom" and "democracy" and the inferiority of all other ways of life. The democracy she implemented was a complete farce. Their society did not function when the arrogant outsider who thought she knew what was best for them began implementing her system with force. The most direct comparison is "operation iraqi freedom" and other US nation building exercises or sponsored coups.

I found many other characters to be representations of a global system of oppression. The card shark was an international lending institution like the World Bank or the IMF and the "prince" was a corrupt leader who sold out his people for a cut of the profits of the international business elites (like Marcos, Suharto, or seemingly countless others).

I was very pleased with Manderlay and thoroughly frustrated by simplistic the reviews I read of it. I feel that this film falls apart with a straightforward viewing. As a white guilt slave narrative the film is mediocre. As commentary on imperialism and an absolutely corrupt global system, the film is a wonderful composition. I can't wait for Wasington.

Von Trier's Brechtian Gamble On Manderlay This time "liberal" is a dirty word By Jayson Harsin

"The movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society . . . America must be born again!" — Martin Luther King Jr. 1967

"Dear (American) liberals, You're Idiots! Love, Lars."

In a nutshell, that is the message of Manderlay, controversial Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier's latest effort. Yet Manderlay is a complicated film that will produce multiple interpretations. Some will walk away calling it racist and anti-American. Others will find it a condemnation of Bush's war in Iraq. Yet, as I say, it is mostly a critique of American liberal politics. A condemnation of conservative racial politics is its point of departure. The film's complicated style and extreme plot produce intentional uneasiness.

Von Trier has cited German playwright Bertolt Brecht (right) as an artistic inspiration; yet one may wonder if he is reinventing the Brechtian wheel, one that Brecht himself admitted did not turn for others as he had wished.

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On one level, the film is set in 1930s Alabama, on a plantation called Manderlay, where 70 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery is apparently still being practiced. Continuing the narrative of Dogville, Grace (now Bryce Howard), after touring with her gangster father (now Willem Dafoe) and his thugs since her departure from Dogville, stumbles upon Manderlay with her father's entourage. She is alerted to the anachronistic existence of slavery by a slave who asks her for help. Her father asserts that this is a "local matter," echoing a common Southern response to Federal intervention in race problems that was often coded through "states' rights." It specifically recalls the language of Martin Luther King's powerful "Letter from Birmingham Jail," in which he responded to Southern clergymen who had accused him of, among other things, being a meddling outsider.

White liberal American intellectuals will no doubt have a hard time resisting identification with the white do-gooder Grace, who, like the North, the Federal government, and the social worker, believes that race relations at Manderlay are in moral terms not a local matter. "We have a moral obligation," Grace says to her father, as she persuades him to loan her gangster firepower to oversee her reform initiative.

But King was African-American and Grace is white. Should that matter? It matters in terms of Von Trier's audience (mostly American art cinema liberals and European intellectuals). It also matters for the history of white social and policy reactions to "the race problem," liberal and conservative responses, from segregation to integration, welfare to workfare, white flight to affirmative action. Grace's color is extremely significant. Resonances with Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust and Absalom, Absalom can also be found in the simplicity of the white liberal Northerner's analysis and solution to race problems. In this sense, Von Trier's provocative film is perhaps above all else an indictment of American liberalism (or liberal individualism), domestically and globally. All of these aspects should be considered through the lens of his Brechtian alienation techniques. Otherwise, this turns out to be one of the most ignominiously racist films since Birth of a Nation.

First, domestically: the historical debate about freedmen and resistance to them is important. While one could go back further, the contradictions of the modern liberal-race problem invoked by Von Trier date from the end of the Civil War. From 1865-1867, white southerners made very little effort to welcome African-Americans into a reborn American society (symbolized by the historically altered Constitution). The Ku Klux Klan together with the Black Codes terrorized African-Americans physically and deprived them of education and the legal franchise. While some American historians have noted the important changes of freedmen and -women marrying; establishing households, schools, and churches; owning 20 percent more land during the Reconstruction years — others emphasize that even so, the country did not solve the problem of race. And the South in particular, in terms of land reforms, enfranchisement, and education, was not ready to change of its own accord. Many African-Americans exercised agency and made valiant efforts to become self-sufficient, yet they faced no little opposition from the planter class and some poor whites (even though evidence exists of some alliances between African-Americans and poor whites).

While Von Trier's film does little to emphasize the efforts made by African-Americans to exercise their freedom in the ways I've noted, it is virtuosic at portraying the structures many faced when they set foot off the plantation (symbolized by a shortlived character who, venturing off the plantation, waits for a sympathetic woman, a white reformer like Grace, but finds bloodthirsty white men instead). The role of a traveling salesman huckster also portrays the white mediation of emancipation through debt peonage and sharecropping. The failure of Reconstruction with the Compromise of 1877 brought a more precarious period of civil and economic life to African-Americans in the South.

And yet Manderlay makes claims to a historical context in the 1930s. Here von Trier's dramatic vehicle of slavery existing in the 1930s is again more metaphorical than realist. The point is that while the furniture of racism was rearranged, it was still the same racist edifice. In addition, the role of an African-American leader is played by Wilhelm (Danny Glover), a house slave entrusted with knowledge of the entire Manderlay plantation rules and governance. Echoing views of nineteenth-century African-American leader Booker T. Washington, Wilhelm's analysis is that under the conditions at Manderlay, his people will meet a better life by consenting to the old social structures. The fact that armed gangsters must enforce the redistribution of social roles on one piece of property, which disappears when they disappear, is not a little reminiscent of Reconstruction military occupation of the South and its aftermath. To read on, see the full review at http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/51/manderlay.htm

A person may not have to see "Dogville" before they get to this film-- but it helps. Von Trier takes his time getting where he is going, laying tracks in plenty of directions, and if you are not familiar with his style and don't know that it will all end with a colossal crunch, you may feel bored or confused. Fear not, though-- this movie's climax and finish depend wholly on the build-up, and when they happen they are shattering. In a shorter movie with less nuance and fewer ideas presented, it would just be exploitation.

Critics who say that Lars von Trier is just grinding an axe and that his views on America are unwelcome and inaccurate are missing the larger point. So far the two movies of his new trilogy seem to be seething with questions, not preaching answers. The spectrum of perspectives and philosophies presented make these movies themselves as experimental as the moral quests of Tom in "Dogville" and Grace in "Manderlay". We get to share initial outrage, labor for a solution, and then despair in how easily it all falls apart once human weakness and natural disaster are factored in.

Adjusting to the change of casting takes a few moments, but then it just fits right in with the theatrical nature of these movies. Anyone who has seen a play performed with different casts knows that the two productions are weird cousins, and this can make actors shine in their individual gifts. I would have loved to see Nicole Kidman devour this role, but Howard's youth and vulnerability really add to the tenuous nature of her power over Manderlay and its dark secrets.

I think it's lucky that von Trier is not an American. If an American director showed these images of oppression and slavery, he'd be reviled even moreso, especially if he were white. Americans demand "sensitivity" from movies about real issues, and violence and humiliation are really only safe subjects in horror films and art cinema. Sometimes it takes an outsider to show you what you look like to the world and remind you of the work you have left to do. This movie feels distinctly American in its woe and in it's heartsickness at good deeds gone not unpunished. Isn't change impossible? Haven't we given it our best shot already? "Manderlay" agrees with us-- but urges us to keep trying.

Anti-American or not? This seems to be the most important question for many American viewers when deciding whether to like von Triers trilogy of films about America. Uninteresting as the discussion may be i must still say that i don't think it's anti-American, rather it just shows a very bleak view of humanity in general.

In my opinion Dogville was an amazing film. Even though it was artificial to the core with it's theatrical style i still felt it all the way to the bone. Seldom have i seen such an arty movie that still worked so well. Amazing actors, a story that is brutal and inhuman and an amazing ending. Doing a follow-up to such a movie is not easy, and yet von Trier has promised to make two. Today i saw Manderlay and the question is if it lived up to the expectations given by Dogville.

Right from the beginning Manderlay is at a disadvantage compared to Dogville. The theatrical style with it's stage-like setup and minimum of props has already been done and is not as unique as it was when Dogville was released. Also the lead actress Nicole Kidman is missing, replaced by the (at least to me) quite unknown Bryce Dallas Howard. Also James Caan as her father is replaced by Willem Dafoe. So how did they do? Willem Dafoe is in my opinion one of the most talented actors today in Hollywood and he does excellent here as usual, Bryce Dallas Howard on the other hand is rather pale as a replacement for Kidman. Don't get me wrong, Howard does a decent job of tackling the lead and she fits rather nicely in the movie. However she lacks the width and depth in her acting that Kidman has honed through the years and Howards version of Grace feels more shallow and a lot less haunted.

Otherwise the actors are, like in Dogville, the main attraction. One of von Triers main skills must definitely be bringing out the best in his actors. Everyone performs well despite the demanding format of the movie. The minimalist style demands it's actors to perform well at all times as there is no room for mistakes and nothing to cover them up.

Dogville is in my opinion a better movie than Manderlay. The story is more multi-layered, the actors (especially Kidman) are better and the moral points are presented in a much more powerful way. Yet Manderlay is undoubtedly also a good movie, as well as a good continuation of the story about Grace. If you enjoyed Dogville and accepted the format in which it was presented my guess is that you'll enjoy Manderlay. Part of the point of watching Dogville for me was that it was food for thought and Manderlay also gives you reason to think. So even though this was not as good as Dogville i'm still not disappointed.

Indeed one of this years best films. I have just returned from the cinema, and i'm still thinking about Manderlay. The story continues where Dogville ended. Grace and her father makes a short brake their travel, and discovers that a slave is getting punished near by in a plantation named Manderlay. Grace's father continues his travel and Grace stays in Manderlay to set the slaves free, as they should have been 70 years ago, when the slavery was made illegal. And of course this is not easy.

Manderlay isn't as shocking and far out as Dogville was. Not that it was a bad thing of course. But this is just a very much stronger film, because you get personally involved in the characters in a way that i don't think you did in Dogville. The only thing missing is a little bit of action. Nothing really happens. People just walk around and talk. The biggest scenes in the film has no direct influence on the following physical action and development in the story. well of course they does, but the development lies in the head of the characters. These developments are more interesting to analyze after you have seen the movie that during the movie. But instead of a lot of physical action we are given as i remember three truly terrifying and terrific scenes that are as strong as scenes in Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves, and they does in my opinion make up for the lack of action.

Manderlay is also a lot stronger i it's message than Dogville was. Yes, the message is pointed against USA, but as in Dogville, it is so much more than just a criticism of that country... it's a criticism of the human kind. The reason for Lars von Trier to place the story in USA is that he likes to tease the big ones. He said that in an interview on TV not so long ago. He also said that the screenplay was written before the incidents in Iraq, so it's a coincidence that there are so many parallels between the events in Manderlay and in Iraq.

Lars von Trier is in my opinion one of the biggest directors of our time. It takes a courage, that i see in no other directors than him, to make a film like this. Manderlay is one of the bravest movies i have seen.