We clearly differ sharply on Dogville. Earlier in this thread, I critiqued your summary. You respond to various points, but I don't see a refutation of my critique in what you've written in this reply. I will try again to show what I meant when I said that your presentation was misleading and incomplete. I will inevitably be repeating myself at many points.

The most damning weakness in your description of Dogville is your bland and incomplete characterization of Tom, the Paul Betanny role. You first introduce him (without qualification) as "an aspiring writer and self-proclaimed leader" and then later say that "The actions of Tom were of particular interest to me, given how he is introduced as a compassionate, well-educated, perhaps altruistic man." Sure, Tom makes a good impression at first, before we see him in action; but while not overtly wrong, your description is beside the point if not utterly blind -- and therefore misleading. It's very important to note (though you claim not to see it) that Tom is ineffectual; that he betrays Grace, that he represents the liberal whose path to hell is paved with good intentions. That's the essential import of the character. You fail to acknowledge that; and if you don't see that he is ineffectual in a dangerous way, that he respresents the failure of the intellectuals (what Julen Benda called the "trahison des clercs"), I have doubts about your understanding of the story.

Or, alternately, if you do see this, you have simply not put your perceptions into words where it was important to do so. I can only go by what you've said.

Overall, I don't know where you're going with your remarks about Dogville, but you don't get there, and don't seem to care. But I know you do care about movies and are passionate about them, so I don't understand why you don't mount a stronger defense of a movie you evidently like.

If this is it, if this is all you have to say about Dogville, then I don't see what's to admire. Comparing it with Kurosawa seems a curiously tone-deaf remark, given Kurosawa's enormous physical and visual sensuality, his intensely cinematic style; how can one compare Kurosawa with any dogme filmmaker? You don't describe the ordeal because you don't see an ordeal. What do you see?

Surely you know that von Trier has strong detractors. How do you answer them? I can see that you, like others, find von Trier serious and full of import. Why can't you see how people would find his films an ordeal to watch? Surely you know that I'm not alone. What are the compensations? You don't acknowledge the opposition or reply to it.

Your justification that you summarize only the first hour and that you're only talking about Tom as he appears at first doesn't answer my objections to your "review," nor do you respond to my comment that what you wrote is more an (admiring) summary than a review.

You say Vanya on 42nd Street is comparable to Dogville because it's the most similar thing you know--not a justification of comparing it in a review; maybe you need to know other things so that you can compare things that are more germane. Wilder's Our Town at least is very similarly structured as a minimalist theatrical production. Vanya on 42nd Street not only isn't a filmmaker's script but a famous play; it's not a minimalist inactment (like a Beckett production) but a reading of a play, by seated actors -- different from Our Town and different from Dogville.. Then later you say I shouldn't compare a play with a movie. But that's what you yourself have done. And you also cite von Trier himself as saying he is doing "filmed theater."

As for Our Town, given his obvous hatred of this country which he has never deigned to visit, I wonder if von Trier would be willing to admit his debt to such a famous American play if there was one; whether he is aware of Wilder or not we don't seem to know. What is clear is that the comparison, for us, is inevitable and important and damning. Despite the sentimentality of Wilder's play, it has a humanity and emotional force that makes Dogville seem the puny and narrow minded thing it is.

You may in your own way "answer" some of my critique of your "review" of Dogville; you don't refute my points. And much more important, you don't answer the many criticisms of the movie that have been advanced by audience and critics. Most important among these perhaps is the mean spirited anti-American content. What do you say to that? What do you say to the import of the photo images and the song accompanying the closing credits?

You "look forward" to von Trier's continuation of this mean-spirited, punishing trilogy. Why? I see no argument or defense here.