Dancer In The Dark

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

A thrilling, audacious work.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

One of the most searing experiences to be had at the movies this year.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

For all its fancy pedigree, the spellbinding Dancer in the Dark aims right for the heart and aces its target.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

Easily the year's most trying, tormented, and thrilling movie ordeal.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

A movie too smart and too urgent to be categorically awful. Clinically insane may be another matter altogether.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

(The film is) one of the most anguished, intense and weirdly brilliant of the year.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It is a bold, reckless gesture.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Can be unbearably moving or annoyingly mawkish, sometimes in the same scene.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

I was astonished to find myself weeping copiously over von Trier's latest, which is another parable of monomaniacal sainthood.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

You may leave this movie exhilarated by its no-holds-barred boldness or annoyed and bewildered at the unpredictable course it takes.

Newsweek David Ansen

Bjork gives what may be the most wrenching performance ever given by someone who has no interest in being an actor.

Film.com Peter Brunette

This is a film like no other this year, and on that grounds alone you should see it.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

A film of so much daring, a film that takes so many chances, it's impossible not to be impressed.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The song-and-dance numbers that make this musical tragedy a celebration of life despite its awfully grim climax.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Ought to win a prize for sheer audacity.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

This deliriously downbeat vehicle for the postpunk diva Björk has generated the controversy the Danish dogmatist has relentlessly court.

Film.com Ernest Hardy

Slow and depressing, but ultimately haunting film.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Leaves you questioning its intentions.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

My only reason to recommend this movie is that there's nothing quite like it.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Aside from Bjork's astonishing performance, it's a grim tragedy that's deliberately drab and exceedingly painful to watch.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Both stupefyingly bad and utterly overpowering; it can elicit, sometimes within a single scene, a gasp of rapture and a spasm of revulsion.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Like a naive modernist hymn made by someone who doesn't, deep down, believe in hymns.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

What is meant to be an innovative, cutting-edge musical melodrama is so jumbled, irrational and amateurish that it makes dinner theater look like the Old Vic.

USA Today Mike Clark

This is the kind of movie that has always polarized serious film folk, while the public usually elects to stay home and prune shrubs.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

If it weren't for a terrific central performance by the Icelandic pop singer Bjork, Dancer in the Dark would be all but unwatchable.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

A movie that by turns is wincingly awful and heartbreakingly fine. It boasts an unforgettable performance by Björk.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Fairly incompetent as a musical and rather silly as a drama.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Two-and-a-half hour slice of unmitigated depression.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Lars von Trier is a mechanic, not an artist. And his movies are meat grinders he feeds his characters through.

Slate David Edelstein

At times the movie's crudeness has an eerie beauty, but the musical fantasies are a bewildering hash, and the protracted climax on death row is nearly unendurable.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Björk holds the movie together, her natural charisma and the overwhelming intensity of her emotions should blind a lot of viewers to the ludicrousness of the story and the intentionally rotten videography.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

So exasperating in its contradictions, so frustrating in its fakery, so deeply irritating in its pretensions, it's frankly hard to know where to begin to dissect it.

Variety Derek Elley

A 2½-hour demo of auteurist self-importance that's artistically bankrupt on almost every level.