Dancer in the Dark

Dancer in the Dark is worth seeing for Björk, and worth approaching with some caution about Lars von Trier. His musical asks us to care about a woman who escapes into imagined song and dance as her life becomes harder to bear. Björk makes that woman matter, even when the film’s determination to make her suffer becomes exhausting. The songs matter because they let Selma Jezkova have something to do besides endure the next ordeal.

Björk gives Selma an uncertainty that makes the character’s goodness easier to believe. There is something unsettled in the performance, a sense that speaking to another person takes effort and that singing allows her a little more freedom. That could have become an assortment of endearing peculiarities, and the writing occasionally encourages it. Björk keeps the vulnerability uncomfortable enough to prevent us from settling into fondness. Even when we doubt the situation von Trier has arranged, we believe that she is feeling it.

Robby Müller’s rough digital photography makes looking at her an uneasy business; it offers little distance from the performance. The image can be ugly, and its insistence on roughness sometimes makes the drama feel laboured. Karl Júlíusson’s production design likewise offers scant relief when the film turns towards fantasy. The musical settings feel too little transformed, which keeps Selma’s imagined happiness close to her everyday life but also limits the pleasure of watching the numbers.

Björk’s music is far more persuasive about why Selma needs these escapes. Everyday sounds supply the beginnings of songs, so her daydreaming has something ordinary and audible to grow from. We were moved when those noises became music, because the change makes her wish for a kinder life so easy to understand. Editors François Gédigier and Molly Malene Stensgaard keep the contrast between the drama and the imagined numbers exposed. The shifts can be awkward, but smoothing them out would risk making Selma’s retreat into song seem too comfortable.

This is where the film makes an interesting demand on the musical. We usually expect a number to offer some enjoyment of its own, even when the surrounding story is unhappy. Von Trier lets dread persist through the singing, so that Selma’s pleasure never quite becomes ours. That can be affecting, though at 140 minutes the sustained dread becomes wearing. A little more delight in the dancing would have made her attachment to musicals easier to share.

The larger problem is von Trier’s writing, which treats Selma’s goodness as permission to keep arranging difficulties for her. Melodrama can survive unlikely behaviour, but it still needs us to accept the people making the decisions. Here, too often, we can see the decision being made on their behalf by a writer determined to increase the distress. The contrivances become distracting, and Björk has to persuade us of feelings that the script has not properly earned.

The divided reviews are understandable, though we cannot accept the claim that Björk cannot carry the part. The film gives us reasons to resist its pressure, and she keeps making that resistance difficult. We recommend it to anyone willing to be upset by a musical and annoyed by the means it uses. Leave some quiet time afterwards.