Klarinet Archive - Posting 000640.txt from 2000/12

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] "Dancer in the Dark" (off-topic)
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 19:32:55 -0500

I've procrastinated about risking the wrath of clarinet purists with this
off-topic message until there may not be much time left for viewers in the
USA to see the movie, "Dancer in the Dark." IMHO, "Dancer" is a must-see
for musicians. This surrealistic movie, now showing in only 70 theaters in
the US (down from a high of a mere 126 US theaters), stars Icelandic pop
singer Bjork. (Bjork is her Anglicized spelling of Bjoerk -- originally
umlaut o instead of oe.) She gives a phenomenal performance as a Czech
immigrant factory worker named Selma. Selma escapes a desperate plight of
impending blindness, poverty and worse (a fusion of early cinematic melodrama
with film noir) by daydreaming her way into the fantasy world of -- musicals!
Fair warning: this is magic realism, not literal or conventional fiction.
It isn't a feel-good musical. I'm giving away no more than the
advertisements do, in saying that "Dancer" ends in a distressing climax.

Auteur director, writer and producer Lars von Trier set the movie in
Washington State in 1964, even though he's never visited the USA and seems to
have formed his strange ideas about the place from the boulevardpresse and
from reruns of "Twin Peaks". In watching "Dancer", I decided not to worry
about which facts von Trier got wrong (lots). For a viewer willing to accept
the anti-American propaganda as more surrealism, IMHO it's a brilliant movie.
To me, it seems valid metaphorically -- and revealingly -- as a glimpse into
the Euro-paranoid idea or *apprehension* of the USA. But more importantly
for the musicians in the audience, this bizarre fantasy evokes the power of
music.

Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The truth is out there. So what are you doing here?

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org