Lars von Trier’s Manderlay is its opposite, the entire setting merely chalk-marks on a black-floor. Characters open doors that we never see while walking on gravel we only hear. Yet the plight of the Hitchcock’s unnamed narrator – that of an outsider thrown into a situation that she thinks she understands is echoed in von Trier’s heroine in his new film.
Manderlay is the second installment in a trilogy called "USA: Land of Opportunities," and picks up two days after Dogville. Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard stepping in for Nicole Kidman) learns of the plight of Negro slaves in a plantation when she sees Timothy (Isaach De Bankolé) being whipped. Since slavery was supposed to have been abolished 70 years previous, she is shocked and decides to overturn the entire hierarchy. (At one point, she even makes the Caucasian family serve their former servants in blackface.) With verve, determination and some aid from her daddy’s goons, she enlists the help of an old and amiable slave (Danny Glover) and learns of a book containing Mam’s Law – a set of rules and notes for and about the slaves in Manderlay.
Of course, Von Trier is hardly one to play it straight and the jokes he plays are cruel. Grace (and the audience, for that matter) really has no idea what she’s getting into, looking with a "different set of spectacles," as it were. The subsequent denouement is shocking, not least because of whom it indicts. And no one is spared. The fact that only two of the 12 black actors in the film are Americans is glaring enough.
Not that Von Trier is afraid of controversy. The director was criticized for setting his film Dancer in the Dark (2000) in America – a country and a phobia of flying prevents him from ever going to. His retort was to declare that he would set all his succeeding films in America. (Of course, he’s only kidding.) "I know more about America than the Americans did about Morocco when they made Casablanca," explained the director in Stig Bjorkman’s Trier on von Trier. "They weren’t there either. Humphrey Bogart never set foot in the town."
Explaining the current trilogy much further (he’s done two trilogies previous), von Trier has called it a "fusion film" – one that incorporates cinema, theater, and literature. Whatever he calls it, it is still compelling cinema. (Let’s see any other so-called auteur make a film without any sets!) The fact that it’s bound to piss off a lot of people is indeed good. No matter what the critics say, one trusts that Lars will always come out swinging.
Whether you appreciate his style or not, one cannot deny that Von Trier is in complete control – he knows his medium so well, is so meticulous and in command of every detail, a great director of actors, and a clever writer that is able to set up such intriguing scenarios. It is precisely this control over his recent work, that used to manipulate effect at every point-and-turn in the making of a film – from the casting (of Bryce Howard, daughter of the most American of directors, Ron Howard), his comments in interviews (about his USA trilogy, Manderlay being the second part), the contrived scenarios in the story, stoic style of acting, and presentation of the film (omni prescient all-knowing voiceover included), even the montage of photographs over the ending credits (to the tune, once again, of "Young Americans") – that make his message feel so contrived, the work so devoid of soul, which on a personal level, make his films as painful to listen to as an evangelist standing on a soapbox preaching on a street corner. The medium is part of the message; sincerity is lost in the face of blatant manipulation.
That’s the problem, I fear, that I have with the recent work of Lars von Trier; and Manderlay only serves to reinforce this. The comment made by a good friend who I watched the film with sums up the experience best for me – "It had a lot to say but honestly, I couldn’t make myself care about the movie."