Dancer in the Dark isn't an homage to musicals of yester-year. Despite some intermittent spurts of colourful numbers with entire choruses breaking into song and dance, it also features a number of difficult-to-sit-through passages, kamikaze hand-held camerawork, and dark tragedy. Instead of borrowing heavily from the glory days of the Hollywood musical (which arguably ran its course some time ago), the film decidedly re-invents the genre to its own specifications. It is modern, uniquely independent and jarring, but for all the right reasons.
Iceland's pop sensation Björk plays Selma, an immigrated Czechoslovakian factory worker living in Washington in 1964. A single mother, she passes her time caring for her son Gene (Vladica Kostic) and rehearsing her role as Maria in an upcoming production of "The Sound of Music". One night, Selma's landlord Bill (David Morse) stops by her trailer and confides he has run out of money and the bank is about to strike against his property. Worried he will irreparably lose the affection of his wife Linda (Cara Seymour), he asks for help. Selma, however, has a secret of her own. She is going blind, and has no money to spare other than her savings for an operation for her son, who will eventually inherit her degenerative illness as well.
Selma still feels pity for Bill in his hour of need, and takes on the night shift at work, against the advice of her doting companion Jeff (Peter Stormare) and best friend Kathy (Catherine Deneuve). Eventually fired for accidentally wrecking the factory machines, Selma wanders home one day to find Bill has zoned in on her savings in order to make financial ends meet. Their confrontation creates a dangerous situation for all involved. Selma's acquaintances strive to support her during her subsequent trials and tribulations, but a harsh and morose conclusion awaits her: Justice and the American Dream do not always favour those with good intentions and noble spirits.
The film is peppered with songs written by Björk featuring lyrics by its director, the compelling Lars von Trier (who also made Breaking the Waves). With Björk's thick accent, much of the words are difficult to understand, but the melodies are nevertheless intriguing. Industrial sound effects, mechanic percussion and electronic airs are often incorporated into the fabric of the songs, which indirectly helps to deconstruct the basic sounds and expectations of a standard American musical. The songs are introduced at specific moments when Selma not only wants to escape her current surroundings, but absolutely needs to. They become a defense mechanism by her imagination and a counter-attack against her failing vision.
With the exception of an overture at its beginning, the first half of the picture is almost completely devoid of music. Von Trier establishes the characters, settings and conflicts then turns the second half into a musical. It's an agreeable choice, but the story itself feels simpler as it goes along (although this is a common characteristic of musicals in general). The performers are spellbinding because they treat the subject matter as a drama first and a musical second. As the torn, naïve Selma, Björk is necessarily open and frank to the point where her character inhabits our mind and lingers there. Morse is awesome in a role that requires restrained sympathy mixed with a fervent detestability, and Stormare is fairly brooding in another movie where a hidden cash stash out in the wilderness becomes a key object that several characters are after (Fargo being the other movie). Siobhan Fallon, who plays the prison guard Brenda, is deeply affecting as a person who sees in Selma's plight an unavoidable call for compassion and humanity. As a nod to musicals that have come before, and as an indirect way to pass the torch, Joel Grey has a brief cameo where he gets to do a little song-and-dance.
One of the more baffling decisions in Dancer in the Dark lies in the limited screentime for the soundtrack's best track. The soaring song "New World" is used only in one short sequence -- and sung with different lyrics -- by Björk acapella. Despite its powerful and actually decipherable lyrics on the soundtrack version, the complete song, orchestra and all, is relegated to the closing credits instead of getting included somewhere in the final half hour of the film. Otherwise though, the picture is a bold and risky endeavour featuring a number of memorable sequences set against a fable about unconditional love, sacrifice, and the boundless extremities of the human heart.
