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Manderlay

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Manderlay (2006)

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Reviews Counted:95

Fresh:48

Rotten:47

Average Rating:5.6/10

Consensus: Manderlay may work better as a political statement than as a film, making its points at the expense of telling a compelling story.

Runtime: 2 hrs 19 mins

Genre: Dramas

Theatrical Release:Jan 27, 2006 Limited

Synopsis: This is the strange, disturbing story of the Manderlay plantation. Manderlay lay on a lonely plain somewhere in the deep south of the USA. It was in the year of 1933 that Grace and her father... This is the strange, disturbing story of the Manderlay plantation. Manderlay lay on a lonely plain somewhere in the deep south of the USA. It was in the year of 1933 that Grace and her father had left the township of Dogville behind them. Grace's father and his army of villains had spent the entire winter seeking out new hunting grounds in vain, and now they were heading south in one last attempt to find a favourable location in which to take up residence. By chance their cars stop in the state of Alabama in front of a large iron gate bearing a thick chain and a padlock. Beside the gate, a dead oak tree towers over a heavy boulder with Manderlay hewn in monumental letters into the granite. Just as Grace, her father and his men are about to leave after a short break and a quick lunch, a young black woman runs up to the car. She knocks on Grace's window. She hammers at the glass in despair. Ignoring her father’s advice to leave others to their own affairs, Grace follows the girl through the gates of Manderlay and there, she finds a group of people living as if slavery had not been abolished seventy years earlier, with white masters and black slaves... Grace believes that she has a duty to make it up to the slaves for injustices they have suffered at the hands of her kind: 'we brought them here, we abused them and made them what they are', as she argues to her father; and she decides that having liberated Manderlay, she will remain at the plantation until she has seen them through their first harvest. Her father grudgingly leaves her with four henchmen and a lawyer, warning Grace that he won't be there to pick up the pieces when her plans for the resurrection of Manderlay fall apart... --© IFC Films [More]

Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach de Bankolé, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe

Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach de Bankolé, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, Michael Abiteboul, Lauren Bacall, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier, John Hurt, Chloe Sevigny

Director: Lars von Trier

Director: Lars von Trier
Screenwriter: Lars von Trier
Producer: Vibeke Windelov
Studio: IFC Films

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Release:

Aug 8, 2006

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Reviews for Manderlay

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1 - 20 (sorted by critic A-Z)
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It lacks the thrillingly nuts, outlandish quality of the original, but is also quite a bit more pointed and focused.

Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid | comment Comment
02/16/06
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid

... an absurdist comedy with a deadpan delivery and run through with the very hypocrisy that von Trier mercilessly ridicules.

Full Review Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer | comment Comment
02/23/06
Sean Axmaker
Sean Axmaker
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Picks at the painful sores of America's racial legacy while withholding the brotherhood-of-man epiphanies that made the Oscar-validated 'Crash' a healing experience for many moviegoers...

Full Review Source: Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) | comment Comment
03/31/06
John Beifuss
John Beifuss
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

Shows that [von Trier's] ideological bullying has run its course.

Full Review Source: Las Vegas Weekly | comment Comment
03/16/06
Josh Bell
Josh Bell
Las Vegas Weekly

It can become tiresome to watch von Trier bash the United States while realizing that he doesn't have a full understanding of what he's attacking.

Full Review Source: ReelViews | comment Comment
02/03/06
James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli
ReelViews
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

this Great Dane backs up his satiric bark with a vicious bite.

Full Review Source: Eye for Film | comment Comment
08/02/07
Anton Bitel
Anton Bitel
Eye for Film

If you liked "Dogville," you won't want to miss this Danish Cake of minimalism.

Full Review Source: Cinema Signals | comment Comment
01/07/06
Jules Brenner
Jules Brenner
Cinema Signals

A morally provocative meditation on race in America and the troubles that can come when democracy and freedom are crammed down the throats of others.

Full Review Source: Spirituality and Practice | comment Comment
09/27/05
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Spirituality and Practice

Rude, smarmy and sickly hilarious, Manderlay has a little something to offend everyone... and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Full Review Source: Philadelphia Weekly | comment Comment
03/14/06
Sean Burns
Sean Burns
Philadelphia Weekly

tastes like cough syrup; we may not like what we see but we really need to see it

Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | comment 1 Comment
10/10/05
Chris Cabin
Chris Cabin
Filmcritic.com

Watching this film is an edifying but frustrating experience; dull in parts, amusing and illuminating in others. You’d still struggle to call it entertainment.

Full Review Source: Time Out | comment Comment
06/24/06
Dave Calhoun
Dave Calhoun
Time Out

The most self-important, heavy-handed film since...well, since DOGVILLE.

Full Review Source: AboutFilm.com | comment Comment
01/17/06
Carlo Cavagna
Carlo Cavagna
AboutFilm.com

Whether we like it or not, Von Trier's arguments have a universal social insight that would be detrimental to ignore. There's always value in seeing something from another's perspective.

Full Review Source: ReelTalk Movie Reviews | comment Comment
01/26/06
Jeffrey Chen
Jeffrey Chen
ReelTalk Movie Reviews

This is not Lars von Trier at his best.

Full Review Source: Reeling Reviews | comment Comment
02/15/06
Robin Clifford
Robin Clifford
Reeling Reviews

strong enough to interest those who appreciated Dogville, but only just...had more inherent drama in the news reports of John Reilly's cast defection in protest to von Trier's mule killing

Full Review Source: Reeling Reviews | comment Comment
02/05/06
Laura Clifford
Laura Clifford
Reeling Reviews

A slow-burning, deeply disturbing fable that needs to be seen and discussed

Full Review Source: Shadows on the Wall | comment Comment
10/27/05
Rich Cline
Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall

Controversy comes as naturally to Danish director Lars von Trier as breathing, and he'll use any means to achieve his goal.

Full Review Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune | comment Comment
01/26/06
Colin Covert
Colin Covert
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

It doesn't offer much insight into America's race issues, which might seem at first to be its target, but it works very well as a metaphor for America's intervention in Iraq.

Full Review Source: Paste Magazine | comment Comment
06/03/08
Robert Davis
Robert Davis
Paste Magazine

Von Trier doesn't seem as clear on the message he wants to convey in Manderlay, even though he says it as loud as he can.

Full Review Source: TheMovieChicks.com | comment Comment
02/17/06
Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone
Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone
TheMovieChicks.com

Manderlay comes off as little more than a droning, embittered curiosity.

Full Review Source: Denver Rocky Mountain News | comment Comment
02/24/06
Robert Denerstein
Robert Denerstein
Denver Rocky Mountain News
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
 
 
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