What did Tom represent? Damn his character was annoying!
Was he just the same as all the rest or did he rep something different?
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MovieChat Forums > Dogville (2004) Discussion > What did Tom represent? Damn his charact...
Agree with just about everything said in here. Tom is just as bad as everyone else, if not worse. While everyone else is outright horrid to Grace, Tom being a coward, unable to stand up to others, wanting to save his own ass, thus not helping Grace and turning the other cheek. He's a terrible person.
I've often thought that it could be a form of self-deprecating humor on Lars von Trier's part. As in Tom is a form of Lars, being the writer and unoffically the "director" of the town (even if that may be the only one who thinks that). While also being a little pretentious and full of himself (which I don't feel Lars is, but many have accused him of being.) Just a thought.
Tom, I agree, definitely is self-deprecating humor or selfhatred from LVT. He actually said something about that and it went something like this:
"Sometimes people, and especially artists, start out with the best of intentions and then gradually they forget about their mission and they themselves become the focus forgetting what their original mission was".
He always has two characters in his movies that are two sides of him, in this case it's Grace and Tom, in Melancholia the two sisters, Nymphomaniac Seliqman and Joe. He has a high degree of selfawareness and uses the insights he has on his own character in his fiction.
Yep, I certainly got a sense that Tom was a cypher for Von Trier. One of the great things about the film is how Von Trier includes himself amongst the chess pieces he’s moving around, it doesn’t feel like he’s preaching and telling a morality tale from a position of superiority.
I like how Tom was very aware of the illusions and hypocrisies of the townsfolk, and thought he was above them, but put to the test he was just as much a dog as the others.