Dancer, though, requires a few different modes of thought to digest it properly. In order to be emotionally moved by it the first time you see it, you've got to forgive a few weak links in the story (Come on, was telling Gene he might go blind really going to make it happen sooner? Why keep it a secret from the authorities?) and follow the characters along until you start to care about them. In Selma's case, you're apt to care a lot. She's just so plucky and adorable, and at the same time so naive and dim-witted that your first instinct as a compassionate human being is to put out your hand and save that idiot child from hurting herself and the ones she cares about, simply because she's stubborn and self-sacrificing. The scene where Kathy and Jeff watch Selma stumble her way to the railroad tracks (nearly getting hit twice on the way) is so hard-hitting because you look at Jeff, who's maybe a little dim himself, and Kathy, who is really just a stellar friend (Even when she "gives up" on Selma she's back to work the night shift with her a few hours later. Do friends like that even exist?? Somebody take my nightshifts with me!!) and you watch them get sucker punched with the very emotions you're experiencing as a viewer: horror, pain, disbelief.
While the screaming and laughing (or intentional lack of it) was shocking in Rashomon, it wasn't as emotionally cutting as Dancer because we didn't feel we personally knew the characters. They were actors, players on a stage, and this was intentional for the "crime drama" part of the film that appealed to thousands. The actors in Dancer, however, feel real. You're there with them while they're whispering secrets to each other, you get glimpses of their raw moments, when they descend into that awful mental state that creeps over you and whispers, I don't know if I can do this. Of course, Selma never goes very far down that path. She never gives in to despair, except perhaps at the very end when her singing doesn't produce the color and mental other-where-ness that her previous songs did.
Why was Dancer so emotionally raw, yet filmed as a documentary and presented as a musical? The three styles of film work together fluidly in some places, awkwardly in others. Is this intentional, to illustrate that Selma's defense mechanism--dancing and song--wasn't completely effective? I'd like to think this, but I'm also leaning too towards the simple fact that art is rarely perfect, and it could be a hiccup in von Trier's design. Still, even musicals don't go so far as to hang their adorable main characters. The day is usually saved. In Dancer, it isn't. It just gets worse and worse. What does this mean in the conversation of institutions and the individual? Of course, usually the individual doesn't deal with real life by imagining vivid musical numbers and withholding life-saving evidence. (I'd also like to point out that the second lawyer was willing to be paid the exact amount Selma saved for Gene's surgery, when earlier she begged that that amount be enough for the doctor. What, doctors aren't institutionalized? I beg to differ. So are lawyers. But she still could have pleaded for pro bono. The weak links in this story are irritating.) If again we want to excuse this, von Trier could be trying to present the court system as a life-or-death situation in some cases, where prejudice is stronger than evidence.
Curious to see what people ask about in the forum this week. Still irritated with Dancer. It looks like Rashomon has my top billing for our international film list.
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