Word: trier
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...James Marsh's The King. A similar theme, of past sins haunting and tainting the present, was the preoccupation of several other biggies: ancient murders in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, boyhood betrayal in Michael Haneke's Hidden, slavery in the American South in Lars Von Trier's Manderlay. The Grand Palais screen was streaked with guilty consciences. And as Sith ends with its plot conflicts in midair, leading up and back to the original 1977 Star Wars film, so many of the Cannes entries ended opaquely. Instead of a satisfied "Aha!", audiences were left muttering...
...mystery melodramas about identity: Michael Haneke's Hidden and Cronenberg's A History of Violence. One critic, looking to the past two years, when the Palme winners Elephant and Fahrenheit 9/11 were both critical of American society, suggests that the Palme might go to Lars Von Trier's Manderlay, a parable of freed slaves reluctant to give up their old servitude. Hmmm... we wonder what Toni Morrison thinks of that film...
...Hidden, Charlotte Gainsbourg in Lemming, Jessica Lange in Don't Come Knocking. It's true that Natalie Portman cried for the first nine mins. of Free Zone; that Fusako Urabe survived an emotional thrashing in Bashing; that Manderlay star Bryce Dallas Howard had to put up with Von Trier's Svengalise personality; that Taiwanese beauty Hsu Chi (aka Shu Qi) was quite decorative watching guys shoot pool in Three Times; and that Alison Lohmann carried the story, while sinking the plausibility, of Where the Truth Lies. These performances merit sympathy at best, not a commendation...
...shadows of guilt hanging over Manderlay are longer and darker than in the other films, and speak to a crucial American social crime: the imposition and perpetuation of slavery. The second of a 1930s trilogy that began with Dogville, Von Trier's new work again has the redheaded Grace as its focus. (There she was played by Nicole Kidman, here by Ron Howard's daughter.) She comes to Manderlay, a plantation that has only now, 70 years after the Civil War, with the death of its owner Mam (Lauren Bacall), freed its slaves. But do they want to be free...
...Trier always has a few shocks up his sleeve: a banquet in which whites put on blackface; the violent taking of Grace by Timothy (Isaach De Bankole), the most rebellious of the ex-slaves. The director is also fond of parading America's old crimes, most explicitly in a closing montage of lynchings and other rank injustices to African-Americans. But though the film uses Dogville's technique of presenting all the action on a single stage, with no realistic sets and few props, it hasn't the kick or the sweep of the earlier film. Von Trier...