Lars von Trier’s follow-up to the incendiary Dogville shows us that even stubborn filmmakers can learn from at least some of their own mistakes. Manderlay is the second in a projected trilogy about the USA and again follows Grace (this time played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who takes over from Nicole Kidman), the daughter of a mafia boss (Willem Dafoe) who thinks she can single-handedly impart the knowledge of the age-old Western civilisation upon poor new America. Like its predecessor, Manderlay is a very interesting flawed picture, though both films have very different weaknesses and strengths.

 

In Manderlay, which can be appreciated without having seen Dogville, Grace happens upon a Southern plantation were slavery is still practised seventy years after it was originally abolished. Shocked by the exploitation of these men and women, Grace tries to set things right, though she will have to learn that freedom and democracy are not easily imparted if the uprising does not come from the suppressed people themselves. As in Dogville, von Trier employs a Brechtian staging on a Spartan soundstage, with very little props and almost no sets. Many things, though not all, are to be imagined: a visible dust storm swipes away many invisible cotton plants, with the few surviving plants yielding visible cotton.

 

Like its approach to staging the story in an artificial way, the copious voice overs underline the allegorical qualities of the story. Unfortunately, in Manderlay this does not impress as much as it did in Dogville, because its fresh otherness has partially worn off. The performances are also not as strong in this second installment, with Dallas Howard rarely exuding the same intensity that marked Kidman’s performance and less strong acting from the ensemble, even though Danny Glover and Isaach De Bankolé offer solid turns as an elder and studly slave respectively.

 

Where Manderlay is a marked improvement over its predecessor is in its storytelling and editing: the film is almost forty minutes shorter and benefits greatly from this tighter edit, because the formal qualities of the Dane's socio-political allegories can hardly sustain three hours worth of intellectual puzzling. The film’s handling of Grace’s inevitable comeuppance is also stronger because it focuses more tightly on a single subject (suppression and liberty; whereas Dogville was about democracy in general) and thus can explore it more profoundly. The film also has two very mundane things going for it: it features sex (and interracial sex at that) and a lot more humour than part one.

 

Lars’s playing God on a Brechtian stage is always provocative, even though his ideas sometimes are not. The writer-director is very similar to his creations Grace (and to a certain extent Glover's Wilhelm) in that he wants to rule the world. Thank God he makes us smile (not in the least because of its ironic ending) and offers some excellent food for thought in the process. We may not exactly bow at his altar, but it certainly is interesting to take notice of what he has to say.

 

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