Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003)

Nicole Kidman and Zeljko Ivanek in Dogville

Narrator: John Hurt
Grace Margaret Mulligan: Nicole Kidman
Tom Edison: Paul Bettany
Gloria: Harriet Andersson
Ma Ginger: Lauren Bacall
Mrs. Henson: Blair Brown
The Big Man: James Caan
Vera: Patricia Clarkson
Bill Henson: Jeremy Davies
James McKay: Ben Gazzara
Tom Edison Sr.: Philip Baker Hall
Ben: Zeljko Ivanek
Olivia: Cleo King
Liz Henson: Chloë Sevigny
Chuck: Stellan Skarsgård

Director: Lars von Trier
Screenplay: Lars von Trier
Cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle
Production design: Peter Grant
Film editing: Molly Malene Stensgaard

Lars von Trier's Dogville has weathered an initial critical reaction that dismissed it as "Our Town on downers" to become among his most admired films. But that may be in part because von Trier's life and works have been the focus of so much intense controversy since the film was made, so that Dogville looks like a relatively stable and focused work, especially in comparison with Antichrist (2009), which provoked walkouts at Cannes, and Nymphomaniac (2013), his sexually explicit epic-length film. Von Trier has also been plunged into controversy after joking in an interview that he was a Nazi -- he later apologized and said he was drunk when he made the comment -- and by charges of sexual harassment during the making of his films. He has become something of a latter-day poète maudit, whose defenders are as passionate as his detractors. But Dogville, though overlong and perhaps too show-offily "experimental" in its minimalism, tells a strong story with the help of some gifted performers, particularly Nicole Kidman, who gives one of the best performances of a remarkable career in the role of Grace, the gangster's daughter who winds up being abused by and then destroying the titular town. Some of the criticism initially directed at Dogville centered on its supposed "anti-Americanism," which seems to me wrong-headed. Is the barely masked greed and hypocrisy of Dogville's inhabitants indigenous to America? Is its portrayal of the dark side of frontier village life any more an indictment of America than that of the town of Presbyterian Church in Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), a film that I've never heard called anti-American? And anyway, there's nothing more American than the freedom and willingness to criticize America. Why not extend that freedom to Danish filmmakers, too?

Land of Mine (Martin Zandvliet, 2015)

Emil Belton and Zoe Zandvliet in Land of Mine

Sgt. Carl Rasmussen: Roland Møller
Sebastian Schumann: Louis Hofmann
Helmut Morbach: Joel Basman
Lt. Ebbe Jensen: Mikkel Boe Følsgaard
Peter: Mads Riisom
Ludwig Haffke: Oskar Bökelmann
Ernst Lessner: Emil Belton
Werner Lessner: Oskar Belton
Karin: Laura Bro
Elisabeth: Zoe Zandvliet

Director: Martin Zandvliet
Screenplay: Martin Zandvliet
Cinematography: Camilla Hjelm
Production design: Gitta Malling
Film editing: Per Sandholt, Molly Malene Stensgaard
Music: Sune Martin

The English title, Land of Mine, is an unfortunate but perhaps irresistible pun. The original Danish title was Under Sandet -- "Under the Sand" -- which lacks resonance with its central theme: the cruelty inflicted by victors on the vanquished. Land of Mine at least picks up on that theme, the patriotic urge to revenge one's country on those who attacked it, as well as indicating the action of the film, the defusing and disposal of land mines planted by the Germans along the Danish coast during World War II. It focuses on the Danish Sgt. Carl Rasmussen, tasked with training and supervising a company of German prisoners of war who are the ones who do the terrifying work of locating unexploded mines along the seashore. When we meet Rasmussen, he is brutally beating a German soldier who has had the audacity to pick up a Danish flag as a souvenir, so the officers in charge of the land mine detail are fairly certain that he will be no softy when it comes to handing the POWs. It turns out that the prisoners are very young -- barely out of their teens, late conscripts into the German army in the waning days of the war. Rasmussen and the POWs are billeted on a woman who has a small farm near the shore, and who shares his hatred for the Germans, stinting on the food she is supposed to provide the young men. She also has a young daughter, who in her innocence bears no grudge against the men and happily plays with one of them until her mother sends him away. It's a situation full of suspense, of course, but writer-director Martin Zandvliet can't seem to stay away from the obvious plotting clichés. We know that there will be some sort of rapprochement between Rasmussen and his fresh-faced charges. When we see that two of the young men are twins, who have dreams of returning to Germany and using their bricklaying skills to help rebuild their country, we're pretty sure that one or both of them will have to die. The hard-bitten sergeant shows no affection to anyone except his dog, so we're certain that the dog's a goner. We're not surprised when the little girl wanders off into the minefield and has to be rescued by the Germans, causing a change of heart in the girl's mother. And so on to the end of the film, which is supposed to be heartwarming but really feels like a foregone conclusion, a working-out of the movie's moral vision. Forgiveness is a fine and necessary thing, but Land of Mine too often sacrifices the drama for the sermon, just as the intrinsic facetiousness of the titular pun undercuts the seriousness of the film's intent.