Dancer in the Dark
DVD
Title:
 
Dancer in the Dark
Category:
 
Dramas
Actors:
 
Directors:
 
UPC:
 
79404351992
Released:
 
03 20 2001
Original Release:
 
1999
Studio:
 
Warner Home Video
Catalog #:
 
N5199
Language:
 
Original:English
Rating:
 
R (MPAA)
Format:
 
DVD Color
Runtime:
 
141 minutes
Region:
 
1
Our Price $19.98
Media Mail (allow 2-4 weeks); First Class (allow 1-3 weeks)
Awards
Cannes: Best Actress (2000)
Cannes: Palme d'Or (2000)
 
Description
The final installment in Lars von Trier's Golden Heart trilogy (which includes BREAKING THE WAVES and THE IDIOTS), DANCER IN THE DARK takes the director's original blend of heightened pseudorealism, fabricated melodrama, and the priciples of the Dogme 95 genre to a dangerously intense level. The story concerns Selma (Björk), a Czech immigrant living in 1964 Washington State with her 12-year-old son, Gene (Vladan Kostic). On the verge of blindness, Selma spends her days working in a factory, as well as performing other odd jobs, in order to save up enough money to pay for an operation that will cure Gene of the same disease. To pass the time, Selma fantasizes that her own life is a musical, one in which her friends join her in sweeping song-and-dance routines. After her neighbor Bill (David Morse) discovers Selma's hidden savings and steals them from her, she is forced to perform an act of salvation that will condemn her forever. As the innocent Selma, Björk is one of the most fragile and heartbreaking presences the screen has ever seen. Her unbearably moving performance is enough to keep the viewer mesmerized throughout, even amid the story gaps and inconsistencies. Featuring compassionate supporting turns by Catherine Deneuve and Peter Stormare, DANCER IN THE DARK is an unrelenting gut punch that will have sympathetic audiences quivering with uncontrollable emotion.

Reviews

Total Film 10/01/2000 "...[Bjork delivers] a performance that is warm, heart-breaking and harrowing....This'll be the most involving and traumatic cinematic experience of your year..." -- 5 out of 5 stars
Entertainment Weekly 12/22/2000 Ranked #1 in Entertainment Weekly's "Lisa Schwarzbaum's BEST MOVIES OF 2000"
USA Today 09/22/2000 "...Highly original..."
Rolling Stone 10/12/2001 "...The spellbinding DANCER IN THE DARK aims right for the heart and aces its target. And Bjork is thrilling, possessed of a face the camera embraces and an emotional range as compelling and varied as her music..."
Chicago Sun-Times 10/20/2000 "...It smashes down the walls of habit that surround so many movies. It returns to the wellsprings..."
Entertainment Weekly 09/22/2000 "...[The] musical numbers celebrate and reinvigorate convention....DANCER IN THE DARK is graced with a particular genius..." -- Rating: A
New York Times 09/22/2000 "...Utterly overpowering....Björk, in her movie debut, seems to be inventing a new style of film acting, if not an entirely new kind of human being..."



Contributors
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Star:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Screenwriter:
 
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Director of Photography:
 
Editor:
 
 
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Music:
 
Keywords:
 
Dancers, Drama, Drama (General), Essential Cinema, Hollywood, Illness, Theatrical Release