Love him or hate him, Lars Von Trier is certainly interesting. Too bad his latest movie, “”Manderlay,”” isn’t. Although the Danish director was once hailed as a groundbreaking filmmaker, “Manderlay” (the sequel to 2003’s “Dogville”) is as boring as it is unoriginal. It’s the second installment of his “”USA – Land of Opportunity”” trilogy. The title is, of course, ironic because both installments portray Americans as selfish, violent oppressors of the weak.
Pretty Baby: In “Manderlay,” Bryce Dallas Howard takes over Nicole Kidman’s role as Grace, a heroine who leaves her mobster father (Willem Dafoe) to help out blacks living in bondage on a slave plantation in 1930s Alabama. This sequel to “Dogville” is the second installment of Lars Von Trier’s trilogy chronicling America’s historical woes.
“Manderlay,” like its predecessor, was filmed on an open sound stage with very few sets and tells the tale of a slave plantation existing in 20th century America. It is a noble premise, but because Von Trier insists on bashing his political message over the heads of the audience members, the film is more likely to torture than to get them thinking.
Although this is not the first time the director has painted a bleak portrait of American culture, it’s the first time his message seemed so irrelevant. In 2000’s “Dancer in the Dark,” he told the gut-wrenching story of a blind immigrant mother named Selma (played by a tragically vulnerable Bjork) who is wrongfully executed under the U.S. criminal system. We live in a cruel world, according to Von Trier. And that is never more clear than in “Dogville,” where Nicole Kidman took on the role of Grace, a daughter of a mobster (James Caan), who escaped from a life of crime to find refuge in Dogville — a small community in the Colorado Rockies. At first, she is embraced by the townspeople, only to be held captive later as their resident sex slave. Although the film spends well over two miserable hours chronicling Grace’s repeated humiliation, almost all can be forgiven by its astounding ending where Grace gets her sweet revenge on the evildoers of Dogville.
“Manderlay” picks up where “Dogville” left off, but this time the role of Grace is inhabited by a different actress, the similarly fair-skinned Bryce Dallas Howard. James Caan is replaced by an equally sinister Willem Dafoe. “Dogville” gave “Manderlay” a seemingly interesting scenario where Grace must deal with the trials and tribulations of being a female mob boss during Prohibition.
But the most fascinating aspects of the film — Grace’s role as a mafia matriarch and her relationship with her father — are also the least explored. Like Caan in “Dogville,” Dafoe is onscreen for less than 10 minutes. The film focuses on another godforsaken place that Grace encounters: Manderlay — a plantation in Alabama where slavery is in full form, despite the fact that the year is 1933. Once she arrives, Grace decides to leave her father and stay at Manderlay to liberate and educate the slaves (Daddy gives her a few gangsters to lend a helping hand, although who they are and what they do for the rest of the film is never explained). At Manderlay, Grace preaches to the newly freed plantation workers about the values of democracy and importance of community, but she never speaks to them without condescension in her voice. She is not the only unlikable character in the film; few plantation workers at Manderlay are shown with dignity, and rarely elicit any real sympathy.
Howard is considerably younger than Kidman, and not only does she lack the same gravitas, but her portrayal of Grace is far less developed and engrossing. Who she is and why she stays at Manderlay is consistently ambiguous. Considering Grace is the core of the film, Howard makes it that much more disappointing.
“Manderlay” lacks any real emotion; even though Von Trier does his best to shock audiences (an extremely awkward and graphic sex scene between Grace and a plantation worker, for example) the film drags for what seems like ages.
The ending credits only add insult to injury. As if two nauseating hours weren’t enough, Von Trier decided to roll the credits accompanied by a montage of images of black carcasses and Ku Klux Klan cross burnings, all to David Bowie’s “Young Americans.” Yes, Trier, we get it. Racism is bad. Racism still exists. Too bad the film is so dull that we don’t care.
