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Dogville
EMAILPRINTLions Gate Entertainment

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 39 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 78 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Lars von Trier
Directed by: Lars von Trier
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 26, 2004
DVD: August 24, 2004
Running Time: 173 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for violence and sexual content
Starring Nicole Kidman, Harriet Andersson, Lauren Bacall, Jean-Marc Barr, Paul Bettany, Blair Brown, James Caan, and Patricia Clarkson
Lars von Trier explores the concept of goodness in this story of a fugitive hiding in a small town in the Rocky Mountains in the 1930s.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Antichrist Breaking the Waves Dancer in the Dark Epidemic Manderlay Medea The Five Obstructions The Idiots
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Premiere Glenn Kenny
It really is a masterpiece--von Trier's first, as it happens.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
For passion, originality, and sustained chutzpah, this austere allegory of failed Christian charity and Old Testament payback is von Trier's strongest movie--a masterpiece, in fact.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Von Trier sets the action on a theatrical stage, spotlighting the existential isolation that weighs on people who don't seek larger visions of life, individuality, and community. Challenging, dramatic, provocative.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
If nothing else can be said of Dogville, it's a film that is like nothing else.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
This unique cinematic experience is a parable of greed and revenge that could take place anywhere.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
This galvanizing cinematic work is also gorgeous, experimental, alive with a Scandinavian strain of chutzpah, and artistically elegant.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
No matter how you come down on this movie politically, Dogville is a compelling chamber piece with constant cinematic surprises. And you remember that von Trier is, above everything else, a consummate filmmaker.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
It plays like a baldfaced, brazen insult, but it is a stunningly accomplished one.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Despite its ultimate nuttiness, has a quiet, consuming power that sneaks up on you and doesn't go away. This is something new and ambitious for Von Trier: a work of compassion.
Read Full Review >New York Post Megan Lehmann
A stunning display of a filmmaker adventuring on the far side of what's possible.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Kidman gives the most emotionally bruising performance of her career in Dogville, a movie that never met a cliche it didn't stomp on.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
The incendiary Dogville confirms the director's sadistic knack for locating his characters' (and his audience's) soft spots and prodding them for a singular emotional experience.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
A postmodern morality play stripped nearly bare by its precocious creator, until only its boldness, cutting insight, intermittent hilarity and bracing violence remain.
Read Full Review >Empire Alan Morrison
Argue that von Triers latest is theatre and not cinema. But at least acknowledge that Dogville, in a didactic and politicised stage tradition, is a great play that shows a deep understanding of human beings as they really are.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
While you watch the movie, it can seem ridiculously long-winded. But once it's over, its characters' miserable faces remain etched in your memory, and its cynical message lingers.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Not for everyone. It is darkly funny, intellectually challenging and obliquely didactic. It also grows bleaker over the course of its nearly three-hour running time.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Dogville isn't for everyone, but there's some intellectually stimulating conversation fodder for those with the patience to navigate the film's rough terrain.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
May be the most fascinating, richly accomplished screw-up you'll see all year. Von Trier, who has always had a talent for provocation, nails another heroine to the cross while playing his role to the hilt - a moviemaking rebel in his own dog days.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Surprises, repulses and provokes. It's also brilliant and infuriating, wise and naïve, outrageous yet unforgettable.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Only the heavy stylization mitigates some highly artificial plot contrivances, and the final photo montage of America's poor, while no doubt exciting to Von Trier the provocateur, is maddeningly oblique.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Von Triers vision is amazingly thorough and exquisitely executed, but the audience may feel executed as well.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Lars von Trier exhibits the imagination of an artist and the pedantry of a crank in Dogville, a film that works as a demonstration of how a good idea can go wrong.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
The film centers almost entirely on the faces of the townspeople, which Von Trier frames vividly. Theres nothing static about his technique, but everything else about the movie is dreary and closed off.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Either an airless allegory about opportunistic Americans or another one of the director's parables of female persecution. OK, maybe it's both. But life is too short for three hours of misanthropy and misogyny.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Von Trier, however, undercuts the universality of his own message with his meretricious closing credits, set to David Bowie's "Young Americans," which explicitly turns Dogville into an anti-American screed.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
An artistically experimental, ideologically apocalyptic blast at American values that is as obvious in intent as it is murky in aesthetic achievement.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
A provocation, a coup de théâtre and three hours of tedious experimentation.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Phil Hall
If Dogville has a reason for importance, it is the astonishing all-star ensemble who try very hard to put life into their cardboard characters and make this silly film work.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
It's a brilliant idea, for about 10 minutes. Then the bare set is elbowed out of a viewer's mind by the threadbare plot and characterizations.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Bored me for most of its 178 minutes and then infuriated me with its cheap cynicism once it belatedly became interesting--which may be a tribute to writer-director Lars von Trier's gifts as a provocateur.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf
Lars von Trier's latest thingamabob is a large, pretentious blob of coulda-been. As in, it coulda been deep and insightful. It coulda been sociologically challenging. It coulda been formalistically thrilling. But it isn't.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
But as an artist, von Trier's contempt for humanity is becoming harder to hide with stylistic flourish. He doesn't even try here, and his arrogance is topped only by his misanthropy.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Charles Taylor
Anti-Americanism is a small matter when a movie is anti-human. Dogville is as total a misanthropic vision as anything control freak Stanley Kubrick ever turned out.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
Disembodied, patchy, pointless work, which isn't even successfully pretentious.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
The politics of Dogville are on par with a third-rate gangster picture: cheap, opportunistic nihilism, with no enlivening sense of humor.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
A symphony for tin ears, a sniggering assessment of human nature delivered with the faux-lofty tone of a Lexus commercial.
The New Yorker David Denby
What Lars von Trier has achieved is avant-gardism for idiots. From beginning to end, Dogville is obtuse and dislikable, a whimsical joke wearing cement shoes. [29 March 2004, p. 103]
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 78 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Kevin R gave it a0:
Awful, just absolutely awful. Pretentious, pompous, contrived...packed with leaden "symbolism" and self-important "philosophising." Stay far away.
Mary T. gave it a1:
Walked away disappointed..Was not worth my 3 hours of positive productive things I could have done. Nicole Kidman did a good job, but that is about it.
Kim A gave it a10:
This is a very strong emotional movie. It is funny how many Americans just don't get it. Maybe they don't have a soul or is is just the mind!? I blame it on their culture and fake Hollywood style ;) Or maybe it is just ignorance.
Trevor L. gave it a7:
Somewhat long, and at times frustrating. The frustration is erased by one of the most satisfying endings I have seen. It is not a happy ending, but one that immediately feels right. I did find the lack of sets somewhat distracting, which prevented me from giving a higher rating. The acting is all top notch.
Steven S. gave it a0:
Horrible, Boring, Unwatchable. Why did Nicole Kidman and the other stars agree to do this one ?
Josh C. gave it an8:
From the gooseberries in Ma Ginger's garden to the German Hummels Nicole Kidman's Grace collects throughout her stay in Dogville, everything in Lars Von Trier's "Dogville" is a symbolic gesture of some kind. Narrated by John Hurt, this acerbic "illustration" of a small town's curious notions of entitlement unspools as a Christian allegory by way of Mark Twain or Dr. Seuss. Von Trier understands that the root of American aggression is the arrogant elite's subjugation of the culturally underprivileged. The director walks a fine line: Dogville isn't anti-American, but anti-oppression.
John C. gave it an8:
Definitely worth a shot if you've got the attention span to make it to the very satisfying climax. The mis en scene seems silly at first, but by the end of the first few scenes you'll be lost in the plot and oblivious to the unique style. The film is extremely well acted (especially Kidman) but I would only recommend this film for those with a strong stomach and a taste for arthouse film.
