Manderlay: A Film Recommendation

Too often we only talk about films in theaters, forgoing the great films we often see on video. I hope to continue pointing out movies available on DVD, that way you can find them on your own time, rather than missing it in theaters and forgetting about for 4-6 months.

So, with that, I submit for your approval: Manderlay.


The film by Danish master Lars Von Trier, manages to be, simultaneously and in varying degrees a brutal critique of: 1) The image of Lincoln as the great emancipator, 2) American (inter/intra)-race relations, 3) Liberal guilt, 4) Bush administration foreign policy.

The situation of the film is, in brief: Grace (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) happens upon a slave plantation in Alabama in 1933. She feels compelled to demand the slaves be rightly freed as per the Emancipation Proclamation and 13th amendment. However, once she sees that no one knows what to do next, she moves in, with a few of her father's gangster friends as her muscle, and attempts to teach everyone a lesson in freedom and democracy, but in the end she is the one who gets her come-uppance.

While the initial critcs' reviews on it were decidedly mixed, I recommend it because it is a rare film explicitly about America and it's issues/values by someone who has never been here. The outsider's perspective is usually a useful, if not entirely accurate one (although who's perspective is entirely accurate?), because it gives you (me/we) a glimpse at how we are being perceived. Even if the view of this one filmmaker is not shared by a wide swath of those outside the States, it is at the very least the view of one man, and it is always interesting to see how others view your actions.

Also, it provides a certain freedom of interpretation of events historically. In this film, von Trier draws a parallel between the liberation of black slaves in America in 1863 and the liberation of the Iraqi people in 2003. This is not a comparison that many, if any, Americans would make, as the ideas/perceptions of those two events are entrenched in their time/space completely separate from each other, and yet, by having that distance from them, it is a contention that, on some level, make sense, we are just too close to those events culturally/psycho-socially to even begin to think about connecting them.

Now, a few brief words of caution about the film, as I know not all films are for all people:
1. There are a few shots of full male nudity, and one sex scene with full male and female nudity, so if you have an aversion to such things, you might want to skip it, or at least have your remote with the fast forward button close by.

2. There is regular usage of the "N" word, and one shot of black man hanging from a tree, so if those things offend you, it might be advisable to avoid this one.

3. The film runs 140 minutes, but it is split into 8 chapters, so it provides nice breaks for watching it in episodes, but at the same time, it's runs quick and stay interesting, so you don't feel the full weight of it.

4. Finally, and maybe most importantly, the film is staged more like a play than a film. Philly critic Sean Burns says it this way in his review, "von Trier shoots Manderlay on a bare black soundstage, with white chalk marks on the floor indicating where the sets would go, if he had even a passing interest in creating any illusion of reality. The Our Town-goes-to-hell aesthetic choice should be enough of a tip-off that we're in the realm of allegory"
Here are a few screen shots, offered in explanation of the visual style:





Watch it.