Danish auteur Lars Von Trier’s controversial sequel to Dogville.Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her father (Willem Dafoe) having fled Dogville, arrive in Alabama at the gate of a troubled plantation where the abolition of slavery 70 years earlier has been ignored. Disregarding her father's advice, Grace determines to right this .. Read more
| Starring | Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach De Bankole, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe |
|---|---|
| Director | Lars Von Trier |
| Genres | Drama |
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Danish auteur Lars Von Trier’s controversial sequel to Dogville.Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her father (Willem Dafoe) having fled Dogville, arrive in Alabama at the gate of a troubled plantation where the abolition of slavery 70 years earlier has been ignored. Disregarding her father's advice, Grace determines to right this injustice, and stays behind to liberate Manderlay. But in Von Trier's world the road to hell is paved with naïve good intentions, and Grace's determination to bring democracy and equality doesn't allow for the free will the former slaves might choose to exercise, nor for her own uncomfortable erotic fantasies...
| Starring | Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach De Bankole, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, Jeremy Davies, Lauren Bacall, Chloe Sevigny, Jean-Marc Barr |
|---|---|
| Director | Lars Von Trier |
| Studio | HIGH FLIERS |
| Run time | DVD: 2 hrs 13 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Drama |
| Language | English |
| Released | DVD: 29 May 2006 Production year: 2005 |
| Format | DVD |
Von Trier is back to the vaguely anti-American concerns and stark sub-Brechtian style of Dogville, with... read more on Time Out
Ingenious...A better film than Dogville
This film is guaranteed to produce polarized reactions from viewers.
Set shortly after the events of Dogville, Manderlay deposits Grace and a group of gangsters at an Alabama cotton plantation where slavery is still in force seventy years after the Civil War. Naturally, she emancipates the slaves and then forces the plantation's owners to work side by side with them.
This being Lars von Trier, what results is no fairy tale. The issues that are explored are very contentious and this is far from an easy watch. However, even if you hate everything that von Trier has to say, the film will at least make you ask questions and you will be thinking about it long after it's finished. Don't leave before the end credits have run either, as they are very much part of the film.
This sure ain't Wedding Crashers, but cinema thrives on diversity and I feel that it is well worth watching and discussing.
Like Dogville, the lack of set and the strange narrative style gives this a feel of a group of sixth formers trying to disguise their lack of prop-buying funds as radical theatre. But look beyond this, and Von Trier tells an enthralling story, complete with twists, which is well worth following to it's thought provoking conclusion. Easy to watch? No, and not just because it looks like it's filmed in a warehouse. It deals with heavy subject matter, pulls no punches, and left me with more questions than it answered. But then, that's what good films do.