February 22, 2006

Dear Wendy
Directed by Thomas Vinterbert
Screenplay by Lars Von Trier
Runs at the Grand Illusion, Jan. 6-12

By LESTER GRAY
Arts Editor

For Danish writer and director Lars Von Trier, America serves as a Galápagos to his anthropological speculations: an isolated environ of singularly identifiable behavioral types that serve as laboratory rats placed into sometimes sadistic, but fascinating, scenarios. His characters in previous works such as Dogtown and Manderlay (yet to be released in the US), are often the underclasses, their lives compromised by virtue of race, violence, or poverty. This mischievous and intriguing theater of sociology finds great appeal among European audiences, who enjoy what they interpret as a bit of reciprocal finger-wagging at the world’s chief finger-wagger.

Dear Wendy, written by Von Trier and directed by longtime colleague Thomas Vinterberg, takes place in a small mining town below the Mason-Dixon line. There, Dick Dandelion (Jamie Bell), a recent high school graduate, finds himself without the necessary constitution to follow in the footsteps of his father and the other local miners — inanimate droids that descend into the bowels of the earth each day. With his prospects as dim as the underground into which the elder Dandelion beckons him, he finds unlikely salvation in a toy purchased, as it turns out providentially, several years prior.

However, the diminutive pearl-handled pistol is no plaything, soon-to-be cohort Stevie (Mark Webber) advises him. It’s the real McCoy.

Setting aside some initial guilt, Dick, a declared pacifist, quickly finds this firearm a most comforting companion. With the emotion usually reserved for a first love, he names it Wendy. Reminiscing in his letter to her he emotes, “I found a new friend and it was you.”

Dick joins with Stevie, also committed to nonviolence, in agreeing that the act of possessing a firearm without any intent of drawing it provides a powerful but otherwise innocuous tool in rounding out a personality, especially for the socially challenged. Excited by this epiphany, they share their wisdom with a few of the town’s fellow misfits. Forming a club called the Dandies, they each adopt and name a gun with which they become skilled and personally intimate.

As a group they study the maintenance, science, and history of their weaponry, aided by bullet trajectory diagrams and medical analyses of gunshot wounds. Grown somewhat haughty, they are loath to see themselves in the same vein as your standard run-of-the-mill, conservative gun owner.

Clues are offered early on that Dear Wendy is somewhat farcical, an implied request to suspend our disbelief accordingly. In return we receive dark and clever allegorical humor, with lower-middle-class Americans serving as the vehicle for, if not the butt of the joke.

Dear Wendy is gutsy, aggressive, and provocative filmmaking riding on a screenplay from a man seemingly on a mission. A social critic of some note, Von Trier makes observations those inside our borders do not. For that he deserves praise. But one might question, as some already do, the intent of Mr. Von Tiers’ edgy critiques of American society. Is he laughing with us or at us?