Dancer in the Dark | Lars von Trier | Björk

Dancer in the Dark is a cinematic adventure. A visual and emotional venture. A film that has something defiant about it, from the very first second. A film that you either resist with all your might, or resign yourself to blindly, allowing yourself to be unsettled by its veracity.

A story about going blind. About the darkness in people’s lives. And this right from the beginning: As instructed by the director, the cinema is in semidarkness. The screen is black, an overture rings out from the speakers.

Selma works in a factory, with thick glasses on her petite nose. Slides metal sheet after metal sheet in the punch press, more by touch than by sight. In the evenings, she does the housework and pins hairpins to cardboard as a side job. She mostly wears headscarves, aprons and clumpy shoes. She came from Czechoslovakia and settled in the USA because there are doctors there that can save her son’s sight, as he inherited her disease.

All these images are filmed on hand-held cameras – they vibrate, seem to breathe – and dances scenes are integrated – Selma dances, Selma sings, Selma lives! She still has her sight and plays in a musical. Her favourite: The Sound of Music.

As she increasingly goes blind, she flees into a world of sound and melodies. And in the factory, the punching of the machine becomes the rhythm of her dreams.

Selma escapes to music’s womb and, from this illusory feeling of security, commits her desperate deed. Lars von Trier stirs up a well of emotions in this musical and banishes the viewer to the cinema seat. He gives the film that flagrant roughness and edgy liveliness.