Dancer in the Dark

More of this Feature • Part 2: Björk -- Myoptic, Disarming, Doomed • Part 3: Straight to Movie Heaven    Join the Discussion "Probably the only movie in the history of movies that can contain both musical numbers and the death penalty! Bjork was terrific. " Miss Movie     Related Resources • Scandinavian Film • Scandinavian Directors • Von Trier's "The Idiots"    From Other Guides • Bjork    Elsewhere on the Web • Offical Site • Rotten Tomatoes

Full disclosure: I'm a sucker for musicals. Like Selma, the heroine in Lars von Trier's new movie Dancer in the Dark, I grew up in a dour and grey European country (well--Germany), starry-eyed with Hollywood fantasies, Busby Berkeley, Fred Astaire, and Steven Sondheim. For me, the age-old question of all musical skeptics, "Why the hell do they break into song?" was never a mystery. I thought it would be wonderful if suddenly, all the world knew the lyrics and dance steps that perfectly expressed who you were, whether or not something good was coming, and which ones were my favorite things.

Therefore, it will come as no surprise that I rather liked Dancer in the Dark, which features some of the most marvelously exhilarating digitally shot postmodern song-and-dance numbers in any heart- wrenching tragedy in recent memory. Wait...make that the only digital postmodern techno tragic dance numbers, ever.

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Picture courtesy of Fine Line Pictures