"Dancer in the Dark (2000)"

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In April 2017 I engaged in an interesting film viewing experiment.
Myself and Nikkolas Nelson another MovieJawn reviewer,
watched DANCER IN THE DARK together via smart phone.

The following is a brief thesis of the film that I submitted.

Plus some pictures for added pizzazz.

The final article is very different by necessity & can be found in the Moviejawn zine
(Vol. 3, #5) which may be available here in the Moviejawn shop.

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DANCER IN THE DARK (2000) (thesis)

for: MovieJawn

by: Hunter Bush

“I love the movies. I just love the musicals.”

“But isn’t it annoying when they do the last song?”

“Why?”

“Because you just know when it goes really big… and the camera goes like out of the roof… and you just know it’s going to end. I hate that. I would leave just after the next to last song… and the film would just go on forever.”

DANCER IN THE DARK is a beautiful and bleak film, which I knew that going in. Selma (Björk)’s life is filled with day to day troubles; she’s a single mother of a mildly disobedient son and she works a relatively joyless factory job to pay rent to the police officer and his wife (David Morse & Cara Seymour) who are her landlords. Oh and, some time this year, she’ll be blind. It’s no wonder she retreats into elaborate technicolor musical numbers in her head to cope. They can make a day spent working in a factory fly by quickly or even, in Selma’s mind, resurrect the dead and offer their killer some forgiveness.

The quote at the top is Selma explaining to Bill (Morse) the way she chooses to watch movies. She knows that the movie will end and that’s just how things are, but she chooses to ignore that objective reality in favor of a less painful subjective one. This is writer / director Lars von Trier boiling Selma down to her bare bones: rather than face this minor unhappiness, she reshapes her reality into one that she prefers. One where the musicals are all still going; songs still being sung and choreographies performed, where the curtain never comes down. 

When I was given this film by a friend, he said I should “…only watch it if you want to ruin your day.” and while that’s not wrong, it isn’t wholly right either. For all the miseries in DITD, it’s also filled with magic, beauty and hope. I expected to never feel the need to watch this again, but I can say that I absolutely will… I may just leave before the last song.