Dancer in the Dark

Danish writer/director Lars von Trier completes his Gold Heart trilogy (behind Breaking the Waves and The Idiots) with a tragic melodrama thinly disguised as a musical. Forget that Dancer in the Dark garnered the coveted Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for Best Film, and provided Icelandic rock singer/cum actress Bjork the prize for Best Actress. It’s a movie that audiences find at turns to be simultaneously boring and exasperating, while at the same time, paradoxically original and emotionally wrenching. By setting the story in a 1962 Washington state that never existed, von Trier casts a multi-national shadow of social satire over a thought provoking film that pushes cinema off the edge again and again.

Rated R. 141 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)