Dancer in the Dark

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Movie
German title Dancer in the Dark
Original title Dancer in the Dark
Country of production Denmark
Germany
Netherlands
USA
Great Britain
Sweden
Iceland
France
Finland
Norway
original language English
Publishing year 2000
length 140 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 14
Rod
Director Lars from Trier
script Lars from Trier
production Vibeke Windeløv
music Bjork
camera Robby Muller
cut François Gédigier
Molly Malene Stensgaard
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
idiots

Dancer in the Dark ( Engl. "Dancer in the Dark") is a film by Lars von Trier in 2000. The director, who also wrote the screenplay mixes here the Danish Dogme film with stylistic devices American musicals of the 1950s and 1960s . The main role was played by the Icelandic singer Björk .

action

The film is set in America in the 1960s. The Czech immigrant Selma is in danger of going blind. Her only consolation is the musical world , into which she can dream “because nothing terrible ever happens in musicals”. In order to spare her twelve-year-old son, to whom she inherited the disease, the same fate, she works day and night in a metal factory to earn the money for a saving eye operation. Out of shame and pride, she hides this from her close friends Jeff and Kathy.

She only confides her secret to her landlord and neighbor, Bill, a police officer, after he confesses to her that he is in debt to his wife Linda's lifestyle. He asks Selma to lend him money, but she refuses. In order to improve her wages, Selma works additional night shifts in the factory, but because of her progressive blindness, she damages a production machine and is then laid off.

Shortly afterwards, Selma finds the can in which she has laboriously hidden her savings, empty. She immediately rushes to Bill and demands her savings back. His wife sees the two struggling for the money and believes Selma is trying to steal his husband's fortune. In the scuffle, a shot from Bill's service pistol goes off. The policeman collapses seriously injured and summons Selma to kill him for good. She shoots him several times, crying.

Selma is caught and charged with treacherous murder. She refuses to use the money saved on a lawyer and instead insists on her son's eye surgery. She ignores the objections that her son needs his mother more urgently than the operation. Eventually she is sentenced to death as a "cold-blooded murderer". Shortly before she is hanged, she sings one last song, which, however, does not conjure up the musical world that has appeared up until then. Their singing is suddenly interrupted by the opening of the trap door. At the last moment the viewer sees Selma hanging, still on the stretcher on which she was fixed.

backgrounds

Lars von Trier shot Dancer in the Dark as the third film in a Golden Heart Trilogy . The first two films in this trilogy were Breaking the Waves and Idiots . In all films, according to von Trier in an interview, the focus is on a "tragic female figure who sacrifices herself for others and whose love does not depend on how she is treated - by fate or by people" . Lars von Trier in another interview: “First of all, we live in a culture, here, in this part of the world, where there is a man hanging on the cross, who sacrifices himself. But isn't it great that there are women too? Is it really only men who sacrifice themselves? "

In 1999 Björk was offered to write the score for the film. Then Lars von Trier asked her to play the main role of Selma. Björk wanted to take part in a musical since she was a child, but for a long time refused to accept the role. In an interview, she said she was stubborn and could say no for ten years. In the end, however, she admitted that she had fallen in love with Selma and felt from the bottom of her heart that Selma had to be heard. Without a solid acting education, Björk finally succeeded in this award-winning performance by, as she said, becoming Selma herself while filming. Lars von Trier on this: "It was not acting, it was feeling." (German: "That wasn't acting, that was pure empathy")

Björk and Lars von Trier both say independently that they are absolutely uncompromising in artistic aspects. However, they also appreciate precisely this quality in each other. Nevertheless, both found the collaboration very exhausting. Björk said she had to fight him for almost every note on the score. Lars von Trier later said of himself that he actually knew very little about music. He also said that the most "mystical" thing about the whole project was the fact that - without thinking about Björk beforehand - his words for Selma (he wrote the script) only got meaning when they were spoken by Björk .

After the exhausting role of Selma, Björk didn't really want to appear in any other film; however, she finally took on a role in the film Drawing Restraint 9 by her partner Matthew Barney , for whom she also composed the film music.

Awards

The film received a total of 19 awards and 32 nominations. The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2000 , where it competed against In the Mood for Love and O Brother, Where Art Thou? could claim. Björk received an award for Best Actress .

At the 2000 European Film Awards , Dancer in the Dark won in the categories of Best Actress (Björk) and Best European Film . Björk was nominated for best actress in a drama for the Golden Globe and for the song "I've Seen It All" for the Oscar and the Golden Globe, but came away empty-handed. The film also received awards for Best Foreign Language Film at the Independent Spirit Awards and Best Foreign Film at the Japanese Academy Awards . It won Best European Film at the Goyas in 2001 .

Soundtrack

Guy Sigsworth and the director himself co-wrote Björk's songs for the film ; the orchestral arrangements are by Vince Mendoza . The soundtrack is available in stores under the name SelmaSongs . The versions of the songs on it were partially re-recorded and arranged by Björk for this album (for example, Thom Yorke from Radiohead takes over the part of Peter Stormare in the duet I''ve Seen It All , whose vocal distribution varies compared to the film). Björk said in an interview that this song is the most important for her. In her preoccupation with Selma, Björk felt it was imperative that there should be a love song in the film. (Björk: “Where is the lovesong?” (German: Where's the love song?) - Lars von Trier: “There will be none in this film.” (German: There won't be any in this film)) Björk but was finally able to prevail, because Selma is mainly guided by her great love for people.

Apart from the soundtrack, a song called Dancer in the Dark , which tells the story of Selma, appeared on the limited version of the album Hide from the Sun by the Finnish rock band The Rasmus in 2005 ( You've seen it all | You don't mind going blind ) , because singer Lauri Ylönen says he is a big Björk fan.

Trivia

literature

  • Andreasjacket: From the eye gaze of the just decision and the death penalty: Dancer in the Dark (2000) . In: Crisis Reception or whatever you always wanted to know about Lars von Trier, but haven't dared to ask Jacques Derrida so far . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2014, ISBN 978-3826055379 , pp. 173-185.
  • Georg Tiefenbach: Drama and direction: Lars von Triers Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2010. ISBN 978-3-8260-4096-2 .

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