The Watchword is Pain
In the press notes, Howard maintains that the climactic sex scene in "Manderlay" is not a rape; but from my perspective (a comfortable seat much too close to the big screen), it was nothing but. Grace's painful encounter with Timothy (Isaach De Bankolé,) a former slave, is certainly not consensual sex. It wasn't even bad, unfortunate, ugly sex. It was rape. I would rather not have watched it.
Willem Defoe and Dallas Bryce Howard in "Manderlay"
Lars von Trier should take note: every once in a while, a happy scene would be appreciated. If not a scene, then perhaps a brief moment, a glimmer of hope. The director wants to make a third picture about Grace, completing a US trilogy—if he can scrounge up the funding and another impressionable young actress. I fervently hope that he doesn't. Grace has suffered enough, and so has his audience. Von Trier, a gifted filmmaker, is stretching his credibility by continuously making films that are set in America and are unabashedly anti-American when he himself has never set foot in the country.
The actual story of "Manderlay" takes place seventy years after the end of slavery. After running from Dogville, Grace discovers a plantation of slaves still living under Mam's (Lauren Bacall) rule. The earnest young woman wants to right the wrongs of the white oppressor. She sets it upon herself to reorganize the plantation as a type of business collective, and with the help of her father's gun-toting gangsters, she decides to teach the freed slaves about democracy.
It's an experiment that goes horribly wrong, and once again, the watchword is pain. It's painful to watch Grace fail and be punished for her mistakes. It is painful to watch Danny Glover, as head slave Wilhelm, patiently explain why fellow slaves would prefer to remain enslaved. It was even painful to notice Chloe Sevigny on the edge of the frame, relegated to a role so marginal that she didn't have any speaking lines.
Von Trier returned to the soundstage, but what once seemed brilliant in "Dogville" no longer works. The film is set on a run down Southern plantation and could have greatly benefited from some scenery: the crumbling mansion, the flying dust, the cotton fields, and the dilapidated quarters of the emancipated slaves.
Of course, there is plenty of excellent stuff in "Manderlay." The film is designed to provoke discussion. Unfortunately, what could have been an unconventional and insightful look at the legacy of a dark period in American history is overshadowed by the indulgence of unnecessary ugliness. There is not an admirable character to behold. Lars von Trier sees the very worst in people, and though I tend to agree, it would be awfully nice if he could show just the littlest bit of good.
