AND NOW, A LITTLE MUSIC... "DANCER IN THE DARK"

We all know what Lars von Trier is like by now. His films are dark, not for the faint hearted and heavy with the kind of twist that makes you go “oh surely not… Oh NO! He did!”. You (or at least I) need a stiff drink afterwards more often than not. So the fact that he had made a musical starring Bjork does not exactly make one think  “It’s The Sound of Music all over again…” In fact, like a lot of von Trier’s films, Dancer in the Dark comes with a warning – it is notoriously difficult to watch. None of the usual blood and gore and shocking visuals this time though… Von Trier is playing around with our emotional landscape and reminds us what horrible beings we humans can be…

Selma (Bjork) is an immigrant living in the United States. Her life is hard – her single solitary purpose in life is to build a future for her son. To this end, she works hard in a factory, saves every penny she earns and plans for the future… Her one escape from her toils is old fashioned Hollywood films and especially musicals – she even acts in the factory’s acting club… However, Selma has a secret… Time is running out for her and she has to use all her strength if she wants her son’s future to end up the way she hopes it will. The problem is that human beings – even the friendliest looking ones – are unreliable beings and… Well the long and the short of it is that you can never, ever know who you can really trust…

Alongside Bjork, whose striking voice and musical talent are the exact “secret ingredients” this dark musical needs, we have the legendary Catherine DeNeuve starring as Kathy, Selma’s friend and right hand woman at the factory. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw her, she is as ever, a pleasure to watch. And incidentally, please don’t get hung up on the fact that the film is “technically” a musical. True, there are quite a few very striking musical numbers in there but given Selma’s dreamy, almost otherworldly nature –  a nature that Bjork portrays so very well – it’s hardly out of place and any Bjork fans will follow her with quiet enjoyment as Selma drifts off into her own little world…     

And if you really hate musicals, well, at the end of the day the musical numbers that DO exist are Bjork songs, so it’s all a far cry from the face-splitting smiles common to this kind of production. To be honest with you, the second big difference is the atmos. As we all know musicals tend to be BIG. I mean, the good guys are practically angelic and the bad guys are “evil”. In Dancer in the Dark, it’s not so much an extreme of any kind but a sense of painful pathos that reigns supreme. We have a villain we simply can’t help pitying, a prince charming who annoys us – and yet we can’t help backing – and an heroine struggling against it all, not only ailing but also proud to a fault, refusing to ask for help, which ultimately leads to her demise… And the best bit ? It’s all set in rather oblique contrast to The Sound of Music, the musical Selma and the factory theatre company is putting on. Selma’s positivity and stoicism in the face of mounting odds is greatly comparable to Maria’s, the sad difference is that this story is very much set in the modern world. For all her sweetness Selma is ultimately consumed by the system and no pity is shown to her – at least not by the people who can have any influence at all over her destiny.

So first of all for Von Trier and Bjork fans, but also for fans of musicals – who want to see a bit of a different take on their beloved genre - and non-fans of musicals alike this is a must see. I am not saying you will find it easy to watch – but you won’t regret having done it either…