[img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/user/icons/icon14.gif[/img] Dogville's depiction of detatchment, the worthlessness of the human promise, mistrust and animalistic selfishness is incredibly moving. Nicole Kidman gives a breathtaking performance as a troubled, overly sympathetic daughter of a gangster, who ends up in the hands of a seemingly morally functioning town, where eventually she gets horribly abused and mistreated by the residents. The visually alienating design featuring no environment, or in fact sets, detatches you from the story in a way which sometimes can be quite irritating. I think the film may have worked better if it was filmed traditionally with all these traits. Lars Von Trier's choice to film it this way may have been self aware and intentional, but I didn't really think it's deliberate emptiness was working. Despite that, there is so much else to admire and love about Dogville. The script is brilliantly written, the old fashioned plot is unpredictable, and it's bizzare surrealism and unrestricted brutality is shockingly awe inspiring. As a piece of experimental film making, Lars Von Trier has crafted a masterpiece. It's got a painfully silent and relatively relaxed tone to it, which uses little to no sound effects or score whatsoever. Yet remarkably it remains dramatically engaging and involving the whole way through. All the way up to the incredibly satisfying finale. Despite all that, I don't think it's Lars' best film, but in comparison to a lot of today's art house and Hollywood features it's orientation is to be massive in terms of ambition and originality. It most certainly suceeds in that, and that is just one of the many great achievements of this marvellous independently spirited film.