February 23, 2006

Manderlay
Directed by Lars Von Trier

By LESTER GRAY
Arts Editor

The second installment in Lars Von Trier’s trilogy has taken its time coming to the second- and third-tier American markets. In the detritus of Manderlay’s long wake float many opinions, some scathing, almost all critical.

Even before his latest release, the Danish writer and director had worked his way well under the skin of American critics, their main complaint being his reproaching portraits of the United States, a land he has never visited.

Manderlay tells the story of Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), a young white woman who, while touring across 1930s’ Alabama with her mob boss father and his enforcers, comes upon a plantation complete with slaves. Indignant at her find, she lays claim to a couple of dad’s gangsters and parts ways with the traveling party. Seizing control of the cotton farm, she sets to right an unconscionable wrong.

At the beginning of Grace’s emancipation process, Wilhelm (Danny Glover) the house slave advises her, “I’m afraid we’re not ready for the outside world.” What Wilhelm would like to say is, “The outside world is not ready for us.” However, in the very strict deferential protocol that once governed interracial communication in the South, the wise and aging Negro is prohibited from making any suggestion that appears to belittle whites. So Grace and the audience take him at his word

Enlisting the cooperation of Wilhelm, Grace sets about to instill the principles of democracy and self-reliance among the slaves who for their entire lives had survived by a studied obeisance. Her heartfelt but myopic efforts to prepare them for liberation yield mixed results, bringing both jubilation and tragedy.

With Manderlay, Von Trier digs into what others have shown little inclination to explore: the raw, unvarnished conditions of the postbellum South. Perhaps as a foreigner, the Danish director felt more license to hint at an obvious truism: that the world into which slaves and their descendents attempted to assimilate was so cruel and vicious as to defy all but the most gruesome imaginations.

That Grace’s “slaves” do not choose to go out into this environment, according to the convoluted history we have been fed, can only indicate they prefer lives of servitude. So prevailing is this perverse implication that some African American actors reportedly turned down roles in this film for fear of the public’s interpretations.

Grace, a classic Von Trier idealist, can’t accept the possibility that the slaves’ chances of survival may be greater where they are. For that to happen, she must acknowledge both the brutality that awaits them in “free” society and that she far underestimated their intelligence. As an angry Wilhelm asks later, “How dumb do you think we are?”

This is not a sophisticated script; it’s a plausible but unlikely scenario that will keep you provoked, if not pleased. It unfolds less jaggedly than the first movie in Von Trier’s American trilogy, Dogville, which featured Nicole Kidman as Grace — a role to which Howard brings a more credible naïveté.

Plans to shoot part three of the trilogy reportedly are on hold. They may remain there for quite a while, because all reviews of Manderlay aside, the box office serves as the final arbiter. And it is somewhat doubtful U.S. audiences will be standing in line for this one. n