Manderlay

Another tiresome, pretentious, simpleminded anti-American diatribe from Danish director Lars von Trier, Manderlay is a continuation of the assault on U.S. imperialism and exploitation begun with Dogville [see VL-9/04], the first film in a projected trilogy. Dogville was set in a Depression-era Colorado hamlet where a wanderer named Grace (Nicole Kidman) was turned into a virtual slave by the townspeople until her gangster father showed up. In Manderlay, Grace (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard) and her ruthless daddy stumble upon an Alabama plantation where slavery is still practiced. Infuriated, Grace takes it upon herself to reform the place, freeing the blacks, making the whites their servants, and teaching the former slaves to run the community democratically—efforts that, of course, have disastrous results. Manderlay isn't just a general condemnation of slavery, it's also a critique of the distinctively American do-goodism that claims—falsely—to have overcome the evils of that “peculiar institution” through assimilation, and of U.S. arrogance in thinking that America can “reform” the world, as well. But even those who agree with von Trier's views are likely to be unimpressed by this stale, arid polemic that reduces serious issues to dull soapbox rhetoric (as in Dogville, the writer-director presents his fable on an almost empty soundstage, with chalk marks indicating locales and an occasional stick of furniture or bit of background construction to suggest place). A cinematic rant presented in a stagy, turgid, ineffectual manner, Manderlay is not recommended. (F. Swietek)