Manderlay - Austin American-Statesman movie review

The only feeling 'Manderlay' provokes is boredom

By CHRIS GARCIA
Austin American-Statesman

Every last drop of entertainment value is squeezed out of Lars von Trier's lumbering and lugubrious "Manderlay," an anti-American scolding burdened by experimental folly. The problem isn't the murkiness of von Trier's message — a wry indictment of America's social and political hypocrisies — but that the affair is so paralyzingly boring.

IFC Films

'Manderlay'

1 out of 5 stars

Director: Lars von Trier
Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Willem Dafoe, Jeremy Davies, Danny Glover, Udo Kier, Jean-Marc Barr
Run time: 139 minutes
Release date: Jan. 27, 2006
Rating: Not rated, but includes profanity, nudity, violent images and sex.

On the web
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It didn't need to be this way. But von Trier, an exciting Danish filmmaker and artistic scofflaw ("Breaking the Waves," "Dancer in the Dark"), has taken unfortunate inspiration from Bertolt Brecht, relating his story/treatise with chilly austerity and spartan decor that sucks the life out of the film. Told in the stark grammar of avant-garde theater — everything is rigidly mannered, from the dialogue to the naked stage sets that recall a grimly lighted play — "Manderlay" is stiff-jointed, airless, joyless. Provocative is what it is supposed to be, yet it's hard to get wrapped up in the movie when it's pushing you away.

Part 2 in the director's American Trilogy, which started with "Dogville" in 2004 and will wrap with "Wasington," "Manderlay" paints America as a repressive, unequal, incorrigibly racist nation. It also mocks the impulses of people who try to atone for our collective sins, viciously spoofing charitable idealism and liberal guilt.

The drama begins with Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard, assuming with less charisma the role Nicole Kidman created in "Dogville") commandeering Manderlay, a working black slave plantation that bizarrely still exists in 1930s America. Horrified by her discovery, she takes it upon herself to right wrongs and emancipate the slaves (including Danny Glover, who talks in a gruelly ribbet).

"We owe these people," Grace says breathlessly. "Manderlay is a moral obligation." Von Trier mocks her do-good naivete, shaming the puniness of such grand-scale amends-making. Of course, her good intentions backfire and ironies blunder forth. Anarchy erupts, and soon Grace appears as little better than a benevolent slave master.

Commendable artistry streaks the morally complex "Manderlay," yet it's dramatically inert, a turgid intellectual exercise that numbs. If the movie doesn't quite come together to make a lucid point, stick around for the end credits. That's where von Trier's intents are denuded. They could infuriate you or tickle you. But at least you will finally feel something.