Dancer in the Dark

Aroview: The third successive ‘masterpiece’ from the Danish wunderkind, who has that rare gift of being able to consistently realise the wildly ambitious as seemingly natural, almost obvious.

Garnering the Palm D’Or at Cannes 2000, Von Trier again goes where cinema has not quite gone before, by this time applying his subversive streak to the conventions of the Hollywood musical. Shot on digital video with the same rough-hewn style that characterised his Dogme 95 effort, ‘The Idiots’, the film actually shares more of the signatures of his previous film ‘Breaking the Waves’, replaying its melodramatic arc, austere setting and tragic, sacrificial heroine.

Here, though, the director meets his formidable creative match in avant-pop starlet Bjork, whose central performance and unique musical/vocal contribution elevates this work onto another level again.

Cannes - Palm D’Or