Incredible Brightness of Seeing

Dancer in the Dark

Dancer in the Dark, is one of the new breed of musicals, often grouped with Moulin Rouge! and Pennies From Heaven. Oddly enough, I didn't know this at the time I rented it! I'd heard some interesting talk about it and also wondered how well Bjork would do, so I rented it from DVD Overnight and settled, unknowingly, into a musical about going blind, dying, murder and capital punishment. Yowza!

I enjoyed the picture, although not without some reservations. I'm not sure I can completely buy some of the plot points, especially about the murder itself and how it came about, as well as the retrial. It all seemed a little too neat in the way it tried to move the plot along, even if it didn't make sense. The musical numbers were pretty unexpected, and, like watching figure skating, you always held your breath waiting for disaster to strike Bjork while she daydreamed.

The DVD was pretty and the documentary on the "100 Cameras" was very interesting, in that they shot the musical sequences with 100 Sony DV cameras, carefully positioned. I listened to a little of the commentary, but didn't find it all that enlightening.

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Buy Dancer in the Dark

Buy Dancer In The Dark from DVDPlanet
Peter Stormare, Bjork, Joel Grey, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Jean Marc Barr
Lars von Trier's powerful film about a young woman in rural America who, facing blindness, escapes into the fantasy world of Hollywood musicals.

Posted by jdarnold at June 14, 2002 9:44 PM