Dancer In The Dark Review

For some, it sounded like a joke from the start. Notorious Danish director Von Trier, who launched the austere Dogme 95 movement, was going to make a musical starring Björk. When critics first saw the film at the 2000 Cannes festival, many concluded it was still a joke. Yet it still picked up the Palme d'Or.

Dancer In The Dark is certainly a bizarre film. Björk in her first film role, is Selma, a Czech immigrant and single mother working in a factory in the US in the early 60s. She is losing her sight and is struggling to earn enough money for her son to have an eye operation.

The non-musical bits of the film are filmed in that realistic handheld style typical of the Dogme 95 movement. The lavishly choreographed songs don't actually break this realist style: they are daydreams that Selma has, where factory workers or judges and lawyers start singing. The mix is beguiling, even dizzying, and just one of the reasons why this film has divided critics and audiences. Also the plot, with a similar, inevitable path to tragedy that you find in Thomas Hardy's grimmest novels, is typical of Von Trier's uncompromising style.

In the end, it's still not clear how tongue-in-cheek the whole thing is. But that, Von Trier's fans will tell you, is what makes him a genius