If you still want your existentialism served up in black and white, von Trier is your man. The second in his 'American' trilogy is filmed on a soundstage completely void of scenery but creatively lit and the set, like the first film, is laid out like a blueprint on the floor, with 'wall' or 'tree' written at the respective points. Grace, the ill-used heroine of 'Dogville', moves to The South with her gangster father and his entourage, where she sees the plight of 'free' slaves and decides to interfere with the balance of power on the plantation; beginning with a regime change. Her efforts to introduce democracy are circumscribed by her prejudices and question-begging. As the enforced experiment progresses, each member of the plantation community is shown to be progressively the wrong shape for Grace's pigeon-holes and her assumption that life her was simply about the Oppressors and the Oppressed has to be cast out. She is probably changed too, although we will have to wait for Film No. 3 to see if her sexuality and socio-political attitudes have been affected. Manderlay does work on one level as a study of slavery but it also looks at definitions of freedom, the victim culture and the way tribes of the world define themselves by not being 'other'. And it also stands out as yet another probe at imperialism, not taking it for granted that democracy is per se A Good Thing. Joseph Heller covered similar ground in 'Take This Picture'. Is it time for that most excellent book to hit the big screen? As a film rather than a polemical venture, Manderlay is flawed: one of my fellow audience-members complained that the intellect but not the souls were explored, and that it was difficult to give a damn about any of them. That practically all the dialogue is post-synched places a gulf between us and the cast - the inevitable distancing, 'faked' effect would have been less obtrusive had the film been shot in real, noisy, streets, and with few close-ups, rather than the claustrophobic intimacy of this stagey set. Perhaps one day von Trier will recut, using the original dialogue. No doubt it will be of variable quality, but that would go well with the hand-held 'documentary' feel of the film. CLIFF HANLEY
Review of Manderlay
