Von Trier, there's no doubt about it, has become a taxidermist of America's sins, but the way he puts those sins on display only to thumb his nose at them marks him as a new style of prankster-hypocrite.
Manderlay (2006)
Tomatometer
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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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Reviews for Manderlay
I am glad that [Von Trier] exists, to decry our sins, but, with another sequel to come (Manderlay is the centerpiece of a trilogy), I am even gladder that he is one of a kind.
Manderlay certainly has its fair share of sanctimony and the familiarity of old school psychological racial conflict but it effectively works on the hungry psyche.
Dubious intentions aside, Manderlay is an engrossing piece of art-house cinema, relying heavily on talent to make its points.
The film's conceits grow thin and von Trier's mocking, hectoring tone tiresome.
Another ridiculous anti-American screed by the minimalist Danish director Lars von Trier, who has never set foot in this country.
If Dogville offered up a ham-fisted critique of 'America' from a plane-phobic Dane who's never visited the place, Manderlay ups the arrogance ante by bonking us on the head with supposedly searing 'truths' ...
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.
Set in Alabama in 1933, the movie lays out an excoriating examination of the legacy of slavery in the United States.
As clumsy and ham-fisted as the movie's narrative process may be, its conclusion, however mordant or unforgiving, can't quite be shaken off so easily.
Controversy comes as naturally to Danish director Lars von Trier as breathing, and he'll use any means to achieve his goal.
It may be that the director has overreached in Manderlay by trying to deal with racial conflicts in an excessively abstract manner.
One should be happy to learn "Manderlay" is better than "Dogville," if only because it is forty-five minutes shorter.
Von Trier's hand isn't as sure in Manderlay as it was in Dogville. His film exasperates and illuminates in equal measure. But no film addict will want to miss his cinematic brilliance.
Von Trier's obvious bigotry towards the U.S. and the significantly weaker cast makes his revolutionary ideas a harder sell the second time around.
I was with him 99%, but the stupid last-minute USA bashing [ticked] me off.
The most self-important, heavy-handed film since...well, since DOGVILLE.
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January 26, 2006:
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