Dogville (2003)

Director: Lars von Trier
Narrator: John Hurt

I am torn between revealing too much and not enough. I had heard very little about Dogville before I watched it, which is how I try to be with most movies. I don't like things being spoiled for me. I like to keep that childlike excitement that I get when the lights go down in the theatre. Dogville is surprising, and I think that with my theatre background I found it aesthetically pleasing as well.



Dogville is much like a play, told in "Nine chapters and a prologue", about the deepest places of the human soul. The stage has no real backdrop, there are no walls or doors and there are very few props adorning the set. At first the minimalist stage (a little like Vanya on 42nd Street) was a bit startling, but as the movie progresses there are many reasons and many scenes that would have little impact had it been done in a traditional way. Dogville is a little nowhere American town in the mountains with only one way in and out, made a dead end by a mountain range. There are 15 adult inhabitants of the town and you meet each one of them in turn. They are average people in a time of poverty (1930s) and little opportunity in a destitute place where even a preacher for the local church is hard to come by.

The one voice of morality and culture (by his own estimations) is Tom Edison, Jr. (Paul Bettany,Iron Man, Knight's Tale) who fancies himself a writer and philosopher. In the beginning we also believe that he is such a man. Tom lives with his hypochondriac father in the nicest house in Dogville, where there is only one store, owned and operated by Gloria and Ma Ginger (Lauren Bacall, who looks stunning). Liz (Chloe Sevigny) and her parents and Vera (Patricia Clarkson) and Chuck (Stellan Skarsgard) and their six children are among the other members of the town all existing, not asking much from each other, and not giving much either.



When a rare bit of excitement in the form of gun shots and a frightened young woman named Grace (Nicole Kidman) enter their lives, they are presented with a rare opportunity: do they reach out a hand so seldom offered to help someone in need who may be in trouble? For Grace, the nondescript village offers a haven, a place she might be able to finally relax, find a meaning for her life, and put the past behind her. But the people in the town are not accustomed to strangers and are naturally wary so Tom suggests that Grace work for them a little bit, helping each person in town so they see the goodness in her that he sees, and in exchange she will get a small wage gathered from the people she helps.

Grace throws herself into her work and is beloved by nearly all the town, showing them things about themselves they never saw before, giving of herself, and asking for nothing in return. But as the days wear on in the impoverished little burg, what Grace gives is suddenly not enough.

Dogville is not so much a story of the town and the events as it is a story of the nature of humanity. All of the personalities and problems in each person in Dogville inhabit each individual person in real life at one time or another: generosity, kindness, fear, doubt, hesitation, desire, hope, faith, joy, love, sadness, fear, resistance, disgust, loneliness, and greed. In this, Dogville can be representative of one person, rather than any town in any city, in any country.



By Chapter 6, the starkness of the stage begins to represent reality, and to show how things continue on in their natural course, while we continue to see what is going on behind the closed doors on houses on a quiet street, in a friendly village, where people come together against outside forces. We are shown, by the lack of doors and walls and roofs, the ugliness that represents all our lives, all our darkest desires, and what lengths we might be capable of to get what we want, the lies we might tell ourselves to justify our wicked actions. We are also asked what we would do, being able to see into the walls of houses, if we were to witness atrocities; would we turn our backs, would we help, or would we participate? If we know someone is hurting, what do we do?

If you've hung in past Chapter 6, hold on for the ride downhill. Dogville, and Grace, take a turn of spirit, several times, that mirror reality to a shaming degree.

I would have to say that storywise, Dogville is one of the best. It is the most complete, most realistic testimonial of human nature that I've seen on a screen in a very long time. It is full of symbolism but at the same time it can be taken for what it seems to be, and can speak to each heart individually according to its own weaknesses.




Dogville won 13 festival awards.

Vatel (2000)

Director: Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields, Fat Man and Little Boy)
Writer (English Adaptation): Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Brazil, and where the name of my blog comes from)

As the movie begins, the Marquis de Lauzun (Tim Roth), is sending a letter on behalf of King Louis XIV (Julian Sands) to the Prince de Conde. The Prince de Conde is played by Julian Glover who's been in a bizillion things, but one thing that I thought was interesting (mostly that I didn't know it already of which I'm ashamed) was that he was the voice of Aragog the spider in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The King is inviting himself and about a hundred courtiers to spend three days at the home of the Prince and Princess de Conde. The preparations to entertain so many people put the already bankrupt Prince in a terrible bind. But there is nothing to do but find a way. Thanks to the prince's master steward, Vatel (Gerard Depardieu), the King is impressed with the spectacle, and oblivious to the poverty stricken commoners who are footing the bill for the party, already destitute and starving.

Throw into the mix Uma Thurman's character, who seems to be an afterthought. She is some insignificant courtier noticed by the King, and by Vatel, and by the Marquis. Enter the ill-fated love interest that has no bearing on the plot and no interest to the viewer. Richard Griffiths plays the Prince's physician. And the most notable character in the entire movie: the brother of the King, "Monsieur" Phillipe d'Orleans played by a very interesting person, Murray Lachlan Young. Young has only appeared in bit parts in about 3 movies. He was a successful performance poet in the 1990's and even produced an album of his material. He plays his part to perfection and is the only one in the movie who does. His part is small, but he is wickedly good. Monsieur has a well documented love of little boys that in this script is attempted to be transfered to middle-aged French men. He has some of the best lines and looks absolutely insane in some of his scenes. I don't know how this guy hasn't done more. He was captivating. He looked like a maniac. I think he was my favorite thing in the whole movie.


There is a little bit of uninteresting court intrigue, lots of money problems, and a bunch of nothing. The food and food preparation scenes are fun, as are the scenes of how they set up the 3 day party. The scenery and costumes are breathtaking and have a very real feel to them. The story is based on a reality, loosely, but is not even an interesting enough story for me to look up the facts on it. Julian Sands playing the King was a fairly small role but I didn't even recognize him until halfway through the movie and still had a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact it was him. He was better in this than in nearly anything else I've seen him in, which is to say, he didn't seem like an overgrown toddler or a corpse.


Tim Roth made me grin. He was hilarious in a few of his very few scenes. When you first see him interact with Uma Thurman when the courtiers get to the Prince's home, he is fabulous. I had expected to see him in the movie a bit more than he was, since he was featured foremost on the cover of the DVD, but was sadly mistaken. He was only a bit better than a cameo. Adding to the picture is the fact that while all the other wigs are just gorgeous, his looks like a rooster, which doesn't help the fact that his face sort of looks birdish anyway!



There was a special feature called "The costumes of Vatel" on the DVD and I settled in for a good, in-depth feature, but it was about a five minute thing with a couple interview clips of a couple of the actors talking about costumes. It was disappointing.


The movie was considered a great failure. French audiences hated it, with reporters at Cannes when it opened trashing it and Gerard Depardieu. I agree with them in that sometimes it does seem as if he is lost in either the plot, the scene, or what the words mean that he's supposed to be saying. I had to turn on the subtitles a few times to understand what he mumbled. Despite the trash talk of Depardieu, I found Uma Thurman much harder to take. Not only did I feel her part was just tossed in to create a love interest, but she was wooden as usual. She has the look for period pieces, that's for sure, and while I don't think she's particularly pretty, she has something interesting about her face that I sort of cut her inability to make me believe her some slack. I don't understand, though, why movie makers cannot make a movie without turning it into something sappy, at least in parts. It's alright if it fits, but usually it just messes up a strong plot line. It does that here. Although calling this a strong plot line might be a stretch. There are a few places that the movie could have taken a better turn and a handful of plot threads that went nowhere would have been more interesting than what finally came out.

Concentrating either on the court intrigue, the love triangle, well it would actually have been a...quadrangle... is that a word?...or concentrating on the exploits of the courtiers while on the short holiday with more humor in it would have been better ideas than trying to throw all of those things into a movie that ended up feeling jumbled and lackluster when you got below the wigs and powder and costumes. Gosford Park did a better job of what it felt like these people were trying to accomplish.



The movie is great if you're watching it for the costumes and the setting, or for the actors that are in the smaller roles. Expecting something entertaining out of it is going into it with the wrong attitude. In fact, unless you want to check out Murray Lachlan Young, or you are into costumes, this blog is probably all you need to know about the movie.

Untold Scandal (Korea, 2003)

There have been quite a few big screen versions of the novel Le Liaisons Dangereuses written in 1782 by French author Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.

Untold Scandal, directed by Je-yong Lee, takes the story that was set in 1780's France and places it in the end of the Chosun Dynasty in Korea, which would set it roughly in the same period, if not just a bit later. The most popular version of Le Liaisons Dangereuses was the 1988 version with Glenn Close and John Malkovich, and is in my opinion the best, with Untold Scandal almost neck and neck.

Korean superstar Yong-jun Bae, who has a very faithful following in Japan as well, plays Jo-won, the Valmont character portrayed by John Malkovich in the English movie. Jo-won is a bored nobleman hopping from bed to bed in a society more repressive than the one portrayed in the original novel. He is handsome, wealthy, and desirable. He, however, only has eyes for his beautiful cousin, Madam Jo, also a wealthy noble (the Marquise character played by Glenn Close in the 1988 version). Madam Jo, however, is feeling the bloom is coming off her rose, so to speak, and this is helped along by the word that her husband has taken a young virginal girl, daughter of a friend of Madam Jo's, to be his concubine. Furious, but with little to be done about it, she makes a bargain with Jo-won that if he can bed and disgrace the young So-Oak Lee (the Cecile character played by Uma Thurman in the 1988 version) before the ceremony takes place that will allow her husband to sleep with the girl, he will be allowed, at long last, to sleep with Madam Jo.

Jo-won has been in love with Madam Jo all of their lives, and agrees, although he confesses that he has an amusing plot of his own he must see to first: the seduction of a young woman known as the paragon of chastity. Lady Jeong (the Michelle Pfeifer character, Madame de Tourvel in the 1988 version) is perhaps the most different of all the characters in this version from any other version of the novel. Lady Jeong was married by contract to a young man. While she was enroute to him, to become his bride physically as well as legally, he died. Thus, Lady Jeong lives her life in pious chastity devoted to a man she never even met face to face. No man in 15 years has been able to turn her eye and even the gentle persuasion of her mother-in-law cannot make her remarry and have children and happiness.

Both plots are set into motion, controlled by the vengeful hand of Madam Jo. The ending, slightly more tragic than the Close-Malkovich version, comes after many hearts have been broken and many lives lost.

The costuming, which the 1988 version was best known for and won awards for, is just as breathtaking in this one. In the beginning of the movie, the dressing scene is stunning. The set design and score and costume design rival the other one in quality. I enjoy the dialog in the 1988 English version much better, but this one is far from mediocre. It lacks so much of what I felt was in-your-face about the viciousness of characters in the English one, but this has to do with the society in which it is set as much as anything. It is a more reserved time period. Even so, Untold Scandal is infinity more erotic and steamy than Dangerous Liaisons.

Untold Scandal was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film in 2 different festivals, and won 5 awards including Best Director and Best Music.

Untold scandal is actually the 2nd Korean version of the movie that was made. The first was in 1970 and I've not been able to find a copy.

For anyone who is a die-hard fan of Dangerous Liaisons, like I am, there are also other forms of the novel, including a ballet produced in 2008; a sequel telling what happened to the Marquise after her scandal came out (A Factory of Cunning); 2 radio broadcasts, one starring Ciaran Hinds (who is fabulous and starred in the Mayor of Castorbridge, which I plan to review one day); 2 French television productions; and 8 or so movies.

The book is well worth the read, although the movies make it much easier to understand because the book was written as a series of letters, the letters written between the characters and sent to each other, rather than an actual novel (called epistolary, for those who like to know that sort of thing).

Onmyoji (2001)

Strange things are happening in the new capital city. On the eve of the new Prince's birth, a demon suddenly appears and inhabits the baby's body. The emperor sends for young Hiromasa, a gentle court noble. Hiromasa is a young man, full of daydreams. He plays the flute with an almost magical talent, and is doing so outside his home at that moment, drawing to him a mysterious woman in a rickshaw. She comes to hear his playing now and again and lingers, sadness in her voice over a lost love. Hiromasa calls her Lady of the Full Moon. But he is broken from his attempts at luring her from her vehicle by the summons from the court, where he and the emperor discuss the skills of young onmyoji, Abe no Seimei. Of course, Seimei's got mad magical skills, as you will find out from a conversation in the beginning that I think I found funnier than it was meant to be, and is well known in the court, not only for his talent and intelligence, but his laziness and lack of interest in court activities.

Seimei prefers to lounge around his home with his servent-gods, several beautiful girls whom he summons with magical paper dolls, and one uber-cute butterfly girl played by Eriko Imai, a Japanese pop singer. Despite his general lack of interest, Seimei is persuaded to return with Hiromasa (to whom he has an almost unnatural attraction) to the court to see what can be done to help the new Prince.

The movie is set in the Heian Era of Japan, a time known for its courtly pursuits, astronomy, learning, and the rise of the samurai. Onmyoji were court nobles who were skilled in divination, astrology, supernatural protective arts, and the wearing of very strange-looking hats. Abe no Seimei was an actual character from Japanese legend, whose mother was said to be a kitsune (a fox god known for seducing human men). The actor, Manasai Nomura (Ran), has the look of a kitsune, and his facial expressions are at once serene and comical. He seems to float when he moves and due to his classical theatre training, is beautiful watch in his movements.

The English voice actors, if you must watch it on dubbed, do one of the best jobs of any dubbed version I've seen. However, the dialogue, while running very close in the dubbed version, is funnier in the subtitles. Especially the almost childlike questions from Hiromasa (Hideaki Ito, Princess Blade) as he is opened up to a whole new world in his exploits with Abe no Seimei.


The movie had a fairly small budget, but has a wonderful, artistically colorful appearance and the use of a little bit of not so impressive CGI. The first time I watched the movie, about six or seven years ago, I found it very funny. The second time I got something entirely different from it. There is humor, a little bit of fighting, and enough supernatural to be called a ghost story. The romantic entanglements of the characters are nicely downplayed. Treason, lost love, resurrection, hauntings, and court intrigue abound as the characters grow and change and mature through their ordeal, and there is never a dull moment.

Onmyoji was inspired by a set of books by Baku Yumemakura, which inspired the anime Shonen Onmyoji. With the popularity of the movie, a TV series was created as well as a sequel movie. The acting and fight choreography are both excellent. Weaving folklore, history, and brilliant storytelling, Onmyoji is a very fun movie that has every essential ingredient for a good fairy tale.