Dogville

Director: Lars Von Trier

2003 / 178min / DCP

The village of Dogville, first the sanctuary and subsequently the prison of a distraught female fugitive played by Nicole Kidman, is ostensibly located somewhere in the Colorado Rockies, though in von Trier’s Epic Theater staging, Dogville is self-evidently an artificial soundstage creation, its various landmarks denoted by chalk markings on the studio floor—just one of the distancing devices employed by the film, which also boasts sardonic narration by John Hurt and chapter heading intertitles. Thornton Wilder’s Our Town as horror film, pulling down the friendly façade of the all-American hamlet to find rankling jealous, lust, and blind hatred beneath, with a career-best Kidman backed by an ensemble that includes Lauren Bacall, Ben Gazzara, James Caan, Udo Kier, and Chloë Sevigny, among others.