The Björk movie Roger Ebert called a “brave throwback to the fundamentals of the cinema”
Roger Ebert’s career as a film critic spanned decades, and during that time, he watched an awful lot of movies. Some were great, with the writer declaring them classics and awarding them a big thumbs up, but others were not so great, experiencing the wrath of Ebert’s pen.
When he really liked a movie, Ebert’s words were often as bold as some of the films he had to review. Unafraid to make big statements about a good piece of cinema, the critic always spoke his honest truth. When he watched a film starring Icelandic singer Björk in a rare acting performance, Ebert found himself deeply impressed, calling the movie “a brave throwback to the fundamentals of the cinema”.
Of course, he could only be talking about Dancer in the Dark, in which Björk gave her her second starring role (something she has not done again since). Directed by controversial filmmaker Lars von Trier, the movie sees the singer play a woman gradually losing her eyesight, finding solace in singing. While she attempts to finance an operation for her son, who seems to be developing the same degenerative condition, she is accused of stealing.
Ebert opened his three-and-a-half out of four-star review by writing, “Some reasonable people will admire Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, and others will despise it. An excellent case can be made for both positions.”
He then explained, “Since it is impossible to take the plot seriously on any literal level, it must be approached, I think, as a deliberate exercise in soap opera. It is valid to dislike it, but not fair to criticize it on the grounds of plausibility because the movie has made a deliberate decision to be implausible: The plot is not a mistake but a choice.”
“I let the movie marinate, and saw it again and was able to see what von Trier was trying to do.”
roger ebert
Ebert highlighted von Trier’s dedication to utilising an uncommon (especially for the 2000s) form of filmmaking in line with his Dogme 95 manifesto, which aims to strip cinema back to a more primitive state and focus on the art of creating rich stories without flashy effects or flawless cinematography.
The critic wrote, “I let the movie marinate, and saw it again and was able to see what von Trier was trying to do. Having made a ‘vow of chastity’ with his famous Dogma 95 statement, which calls for films to be made more simply with hand-held cameras and available light, he is now divesting himself of modern fashions in plotting.”
Adding, “Dancer in the Dark is a brave throwback to the fundamentals of the cinema – to heroines and villains, noble sacrifices and dastardly betrayals. The relatively crude visual look underlines the movie’s abandonment of slick modernism.”
For Ebert, the movie brought to mind old silent films, citing Lillian Gish as the kind of actor you can imagine playing this role back “in 1912”. Dancer in the Dark saw Björk receive widespread praise, and she even released an album, Selma Songs, to accompany the movie. Her song ‘I’ve Seen It All’ was Oscar-nominated, although it seems the actual movie was too controversial to pick up any other nominations from the Academy.
