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Dancer in the Dark

2000

Lars von Trier

Björk, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare ...

7.6

48,669

Drama. Musical The story concerns Selma (Björk), a Czech immigrant living in 1964 Washington State with her 12-year-old son, Gene (Vladan Kostic). On the verge of blindness, Selma spends her days working in a factory, as well as performing other odd jobs, in order to save up enough money to pay for an operation that will cure Gene of the same disease. To pass the time, Selma fantasizes that her own life is a musical, one in which her friends join her ... [+]

	Media	Author	Review
		Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"There is real filmmaking excitement here (...) As Selma, she sings, 'I’ve seen it all/There is no more to see.' Nonsense. You’ve never seen anything like 'Dancer in the Dark'."
		Derek Elley Variety	"A 2 ½-hour demo of auteurist self-importance that's artistically bankrupt on almost every level"
		Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"'Dancer in the Dark' is not like any other movie at the multiplex this week, or this year (...) It smashes down the walls of habit that surround so many movies. It returns to the wellsprings. It is a bold, reckless gesture (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"
		A. O. Scott The New York Times	"The movie is both stupefyingly bad and utterly overpowering; it can elicit, sometimes within a single scene, a gasp of rapture and a spasm of revulsion"
		Kim Newman Empire	"The storyline may be pure melodrama, but Bjork's performance and Von Trier's off-kilter direction turn it in to real tragedy. Haunting and beautiful (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"Silly, shallow and manipulative (...) Screen acting doesn't get much more dire than this"
		Keith Phipps AV Club	"One of the year's most wrenching, unforgettable films (...) A cinematic experience that's at once primal and new."
		Paul Tatara CNN	"A perplexing film that contains moments of astonishing power. Von Trier -- who loves to polarize audiences -- simply doesn't know when to quit."
		Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader	"Disgusting yet interesting (...) Bjork's absolute dedication and submission to the material periodically blew me away"

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