Manderlay is a misfire, but a misfire from von Trier is still more interesting than a blandly successful Hollywood product.
Manderlay (2006)
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work ![]()
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
Get This Movie
Reviews for Manderlay
The unusual von Trier film whose formalism is worn lightly, whose performances impress without wearing on the nerves, and whose ethical standpoint is plain for all to observe
Von Trier takes minimalism to its most minimalist extreme. The format was intriguing in its originality in Dogville. I'm already tired of it.
Shocking usage of racial epithets and images of 20th-century slavery do their part to mess with your head. Von Trier is an intelligent and capable filmmaker, and he presents some fascinating thoughts and questions in his bitter, accusatory satire. Problem
A film with plenty of interesting things to say but an exhausting way of saying them.
Rude, smarmy and sickly hilarious, Manderlay has a little something to offend everyone... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
This already controversial drama is yet another anti-American screed from Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier, who's become more than a little tiresome with all his cinematic bashing of the United States and its political policies.
The [plot] degenerates as quickly as von Trier's crude allegory of U.S. foreign policy ... and the pretentiously vacuous Our Town-like staging.
Manderlay is both more coherent and more obvious than Dogville, which lacked the clean narrative drive of the new film.
Manderlay comes off as little more than a droning, embittered curiosity.
... an absurdist comedy with a deadpan delivery and run through with the very hypocrisy that von Trier mercilessly ridicules.
Whereas Dogville was a slippery, challenging and ultimately brutal masterpiece, Manderlay is looser, messier, less serious and ultimately far less effective.
[Von Trier] ratchets up the anti-American sentiment significantly here, but it's all hot air with very little substance, even more so than its predecessor.
There's a troubling sense that von Trier is simply going through the motions.
It's a movie with more surprising things to say than most about racism past and present.
Latest News for Manderlay
January 26, 2006:
Critical Consensus: Annapolis and Momma Disappoint, While Nanny Casts an Innocuous Spell
Annapolis, the renowned naval military school, is an institution steeped in history; unfortunately, the movie can lay claim to that as well. Starring James Franco as a new... More...
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 77% 77% | The Hangover |
| 88% 88% | Inglourious Basterds |
| 66% 66% | Public Enemies |
| 24% 24% | G-Force |
| 44% 44% | Night at the Museum: B… |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 90% 90% | District 9 |
| 86% 86% | 500 Days of Summer |
| 63% 63% | Extract |
| 06% 06% | All About Steve |
| 78% 78% | It Might Get Loud |
RT On Current TV
DIRECTV 358 | Comcast 107 | DISH Network 196 | More...
What’s Hot On RT
Other News
CloseSponsored Links
Fresh Links
Featured

Last week, MSN gave us their top 09 films. Now see what their favorites of the decade are!

Here's a list of the 50 best movies of 2009, according to the good people over at Moviefone.

Hollywood.com takes a stab at determining who in movies will be on Santa's naughty list in 2009.

TIME chimes in with their own list of the best films released this year.

Click through to see which movies BuzzSugar placed in their Best-of-Decade list!
Promos

Get the latest Tomatometer updates on upcoming movies!



Top Critic



