With Dancer in the Dark it is as though Lars von Trier set himself the challenge of making a musical from the most unpromising materials possible. Here we have the tragic or melodramatic story of Selma Jezkova (Björk), a Czech immigrant, a single mother with a young son, working in a factory somewhere in middle America, operating heavy machinery despite the fact that her eyesight is deteriorating. And that’s just the start of the sufferings that will be heaped upon poor Selma.
She escapes from her reality, even as it modulates from the merely desperate to the utterly horrible, into all-singing, all-dancing fantasies. Just as Von Trier is able to transform social realism into a musical, Selma is able to hear music in the clank of industrial equipment, or even in her own heartbeat.
Björk, thus, is an appropriate choice to play Selma – this is the woman who was accused, early in her solo musical career, of screeching along to fax signals. She was originally asked to write the music only, but was then offered the central role itself. It works, integrating her musical performances into the film in a way that would have been harder with another actor doing the dramatic stuff. BjÅ¡rkÃ-s naive acting, in her first feature, is a strength: it is naturalistic, simple, and deeply felt; despite the stumbling block of her odd Nordic cockney accent, real emotions are transmitted.
Which in turns fits with Von Trier’s loose, quasi-documentary (or Dogmementary) style – the handheld cameras that hover uncertainly about someone’s face; the jump cuts that give a little jitter to the storytelling. This contrasts with the musical numbers that flow from Selma’s distracted mind, and the two streams of the film jostle up against each other in a way that makes each more powerful.
Von Trier draws low-key but effective performances from David Morse and Catherine Deneuve – this woman can even bark elegantly. It is also fun to see, albeit briefly, the half-forgotten likes of Joel Gray, Udo Kier and Jean-Marc Barr (remember The Big Blue?).
Dancer in the Dark is a remarkable, strikingly unusual film. I suspect, though, that one’s enjoyment of it will depend on how you feel about Björk’s music. For some viewers, particularly those who would prefer something closer to traditional tunesmithery, the songs may be more bewildering and traumatic than all Selma’s many misfortunes.