Dogville Confessions

I saw this documentary on the Denmark DVD of Dogville and because I thought the film was brilliant I was eager to watch this to see into the mind of the great Lars Von Triers and to see how he directs and interacts with the cast. Anyone who is a fan of Dogville should watch this because you can understand the effort into making this film. I strongly recommend the film and I strongly recommend this.

This is the longest featurette on the double-DVD of Dogville, with a running time of 53 minutes. It consists of footage from behind the scenes, interviews and the "confessions"(they had set up a booth where anyone working on the film could go and unload if they needed to; they are also on the disc, apparently in full). We get a lot of insight into how Von Trier worked on the movie(although if you are not aware that he has a depression and takes medication to cope with it, there are things in this that will bewilder you; well, I guess that is widely enough known, and this was never meant to be an introduction to him), and we see discussions, improvisation and see how it was on set. This goes back and forth between a fly on the wall perspective and a more direct documentary approach. Most of the time, it is shot well. The editing is great, and they make a couple of interesting decisions in that regard, and this is at times stylized, without the focus being lost, or this feeling downright flashy. They talk English, Danish and a tad Swedish in this, but it is all subbed(reasonably well) for anyone who doesn't speak all three. There is disturbing content(in what we witness in this, the reality) as well as infrequent mild, moderate and strong language in this. I recommend this to anyone who liked the subject itself(save this until after watching the picture itself, it contains spoilers for it). 7/10

If you've seen Dogville, and were intrigued by it, then you can't miss this documentary. If anything, I felt even more disturbed after watching Dogville Confessions than watching the movie itself.

Dogville Confessions isn't your ordinary "making of" documentary. Rather, it focuses less on the technicalities of filming and more on the interactions between the director, the script and the actors, during their gruelling period of filming in an old warehouse in the frozen part of Sweden.

A "confession box" is placed on the set, with a video camera. It's available 24 hours a day, and strangely, the actors do end up in the box relating their experiences from time to time.

We discover that director Lars Von Trier doesn't get along with actors so well. And it really comes out in Confessions when we get to see first-hand how ineffectively he interacts with the actors, in particular with Nicole Kidman, Lauren Bacall, Paul Bettany and Stellan Skarsgard.

We see tempers flare on set. There are tears, arguments, confusion. But this is no soap opera - it's a weird disjointedness that seems to affect everyone involved in the filming. It's like Dogville temporarily overtook these people's lives for the duration of filming.