CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

WubsTheFadger Short and Simple Review by WubsTheFadgerLars Von Trier's experimental drama is an amazing feat of film making. The story is full of brutal, saddening, and heartwarming moments. The story is told in chapters, much like a book, with little scenery. The film elegantly puts forward some very deep questions about innocence, ignorance, and morality. The ending is brutal and left me stunned.The acting is amazing. Nicole Kidman performs flawlessly. She plays an innocence girl on the run who wants to begin a new life. Paul Bettany also performs very well. John Hurt narrates the story. His voice perfectly blends into the film as he describes the characters, their thoughts, and the story.The pacing is slow but I enjoyed how Trier takes his time in setting up the characters, the environment, and the story. The runtime can be overlong for nonmovie fans, but once you get into the film it goes by like the wind.Pros: An amazing experimental film, a powerful story, great characters, amazing acting, great questions asked by Trier, and slow pacing that develops the story and charactersCons: The pacing can seem slow to nonmovie goers and the runtime is a little long at almost three hoursOverall Rating: 9.2P.S. I would highly recommend this amazing film. The story, characters, acting, and the amazing and stunning ending is what makes this film a must see.

KenToo First off, let me say that the gimmick of having no set does NOT work. It is a major distraction for the audience. Some have suggested not having the setting somehow forces you to pay attention more to the characters. That is totally incorrect. Your eye and attention is naturally drawn to what you know should be there, but is not. It is only when you have a set that actually fits the story that it essentially becomes invisible to the mind, and your attention is fully on the characters. This is simply a gimmick. It in no way is intrinsic to the story, nor does it advance it in any manner. It is as if the creators wanted to scream as loud as possible, "This is an artsy film!" Yeah, I heard you, but it still sucks.Next, to the story. The underlying theme appears to be that people in the depression who were poor and struggling to get by were horrible, mean and untrustworthy, and all men are closet rapists, and all women are closet rape-accomplices. In fact, none of this is true. On the contrary, the poorest people are often the ones who help one another the most, because the notion "there but for the grace of God" is most true for them. I frankly do not believe a town like that portrayed in this movie ever existed. I do not for a second believe poverty leads to this level of inhumanity but, on the contrary, poor people generally display the highest levels of humanity, and it is the wealthy who are more likely to stray from humanistic behavior. I believe the characters are unrealistic, 2 dimensional and contrived.Ultimately, the movie gets by with big name actors, a lame set gimmick and shock value from contrived and unrealistic characters and behaviors. It evades the critical derision it deserves by hiding behind the label of an "art" film, so if you don't like it, you are too dumb to get it. I think I recall a story about that very phenomenon and, spoiler alert, in that story it turned out the Emperor had no clothes.

AndreaBeaumont It's pretty obvious that Grace's name represents something more than just a random name. In whole of the film her behavior, actions, reactions are not something that would be considered as "normal" human behavior in such circumstances.She truly was the personified ideal, everything good that we all promote and imagine to accomplish in ourselves and in society. Her "arrogance" as her father defined it, is exactly it if viewed from humans' flawed perspective. But it is not arrogance! It is an ideal, and by calling it - no, by choosing to call it arrogance - we try to excuse our dishonorable behavior. That's why the ending is not logical nor justified. With choosing to step down on humans' level, get her revenge and condemn the people of Dogville to death, Grace actually negated herself and everything she was the whole time. Now, I would go even further and say, her gangster-family background is not relevant. It is shown throughout the story with her actions, and with her own saying "I've never stolen anything before. So now, now I have to punish myself. I was raised to be arrogant. So, I...I had to teach myself these things." It is clear here that no matter where she comes from, she is her own person, creates herself, is responsible to self only. There is one other sentence: "If she had acted like them she could not have defended a single one of her actions and could not have condemned them harshly enough". But it is only at the ending that Grace finds herself for the first time, at position of power - and she chooses to behave just like the flawed ones. By judging them to their own standards she actually goes against her own nature.If the acting is right (and I don't doubt that) she watches the executions and cries, but as there is horror there is also some satisfaction in her - seems like a transformation of personality is taking place. This is interesting also from the gnosticism's point of view. If Grace is grace (Sophia), would the ending symbolize a gnostic phenomenon of "Sophia's fall from grace"?Should they all be punished? Yes, definitely. By their own standards? Of course. But is it up to her to get down on their level as soon as she got the power and do the executioner work? In the ending, what becomes of Grace? And what is done to grace? Was there ever any, or is it the same as the writer who never wrote any.

stevendecastro It is a fascinating production premise of shooting on a presentational set design (that is, drawing chalk lines and bidding the audience to imagine that the walls are there). This is the stuff of theater, and Lars Von Trier forces the presentational method into that of movies, which are usually representational in design. But that's the only kudos I can give to this boring, badly written movie with overbearing on-the-nose narration, and awkward lines. Cinematography was distractingly bad as well. I believe that the idea was to simulate the feeling of seeing a stage play, so almost the entire movie is shot with extremely long lenses from 50 feet away, which feels, obviously, like you're watching a movie from fifty feet away.Now the Flannery O'Connor-like moral allegory in the story is what many people comment on, and regarding that, I would like to give Mr. Von Trier one, no two, very big middle fingers.The root of all evil is not found in poor and working class white people. I'm sure that there are bad people among regular rednecks. But why pick on them? Because they don't fit into some liberal category for pity?On the positive, I thought that Nicole Kidman was great.