I didn't realize this was a play. I couldn't watch it once I realized it. Say what you want..but I just can't get into something like that. Is there a reason why this isn't in the usual movie format? It's to bad because the plot looks pretty awesome.
shareI think -but this is just me- that the fact it has no walls is an analogy to the fact that everything was very clear but people chose not to see.
***SPOILERS***
The scene where she is first raped by Chuck and you see kids outside was very significant at that point. Then, afterwards, they're said to ring the bell every time she's being raped.
So, again, to me it's Von Trier's way to portray denial by physically showing how people pretend there are barriers where there are not. Of course in a poetic way. I'm sure the characters are supposed to see the stuff that isn't there.
Theatre is a very different art from from film, though they are related. It was silly to set it against a soundstage.
shareI didn't really think of it as a play: The narration reminded me a lot of book, and so it felt like hearing a story read out loud. That copy of Tom Sawyer they show a couple of times, the fact that the film was distinctly divided into chapters as opposed to acts, the crazy editing, and Tom Edison's aspirations to be a writer all supported that idea for me. Thinking of it that way I actually really liked how sparse the setting was; I saw it as the place of the imagination, when you're listening to a story and picturing it in your head as you go along. You see it all so clearly but if you stop to think about it what is it that you're actually seeing? What you imagine is constantly in flux and to that extent you're forced to reconcile with the fact that there is nothing really there. However I'm not entirely sure if that's what Von Trier intended because to be honest I don't know what that has to do with the story of Grace and his nihilist commentary on humanity. Maybe something to do with the stories we tell ourselves to convince ourselves we're good people.
shareI didn't realize this was a play. I couldn't watch it once I realized it. Say what you want..but I just can't get into something like that. Is there a reason why this isn't in the usual movie format? It's to bad because the plot looks pretty awesome.
1) To remove the film from reality. The town, as depicted, is not a town but a representation. It's a setting that exists outside of time and place and as such becomes something that the audience can more readily project their own interpretations onto.
2) To show the transparency of the town. Grace's degradation is a public one. Everyone in the town is a witness, but they choose to ignore it. The lack of walls turns everyone in the town into voyeurs and as such becomes an indictment against the viewing audience, similarly passive, similarly voyeuristic, but content to watch Grace's humiliation without criticism.
3) A "Brechtian" device intended to take the audience out of the fantasy of the drama. To remove us from the artifice of conventional drama and make us more aware that what we're seeing is a fiction open to interpretation. It pushes the ideas of philosophies to the forefront and forces the audiences to question the implications of these ideas as the line between the fiction, the play and the "behind the scenes" presentation of both becomes blurred.
Just an artsy-fartsy device to get the tragically hip to vote for him at the film festivals.
They sucked his brains out!