Set in rural America in 1964, an immigrant and single mother who works at a factory takes refuge from her hardships by imagining herself and her co-workers in Hollywood musicals.
Denmark's enfant terrible Lars von Trier finally won the Camme Palme d'Or for this postmodern deconstructive musical featuring a stunning performance by Bjork.
This is a film like no other this year, and on that grounds alone you should see it.
ColeSmithey.com
October 26, 2009
Everything about Bjork and Dancer in the Dark is enigmatic in an uncomfortable dissecting way that shows beauty in the crudest way, and crudeness in the complexity of advanced social mores.
I was devastated by it. What bothers me is this: It is the easiest thing in the world to do... move people by destroying something beautiful.
Suite101.com
September 25, 2010
Habitually galling director Lars von Trier's musical is a black-swan genre rarity - a 1960s-set sledgehammer to Broadway and Hollywood's insistence on sunshiny endings in golden-era musicals about Nazis, murder and suicide.