Product Description

Director Lars von Trier's ("Dancer in the Dark") offbeat drama stars Nicole Kidman as a mysterious fugitive hiding from gangsters in the sleepy town of Dogville. After her enemies come looking for her, Kidman is forced to agree to the townspeople's increasingly brutal demands in order to remain safe, becoming in effect their slave. With Lauren Bacall, Paul Bettany, Jean-Marc Barr, Philip Baker Hall. 177 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital 5.1; audio commentary by von Trier, others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22359 in DVD
• Brand: Ff
• Released on: 2004-08-24
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 178 minutes

Features

• DVD Details: Actors: Nicole Kidman, Harriet Andersson, Lauren Bacall, Jean-Marc Barr, Paul Bettany
• Directors: Lars von Trier
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC. Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1; Number of discs: 1; Studio: Lions Gate
• DVD Release Date: August 24, 2004; Run Time: 178 minutes

Amazon.com
The latest galvanizing and controversial film from Lars von Trier (Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves, The Kingdom), Dogville uses ingenious theatricality to tell the Depression-era story of Grace (Nicole Kidman, The Others), a beautiful fugitive who stumbles onto a tiny town in the Rocky Mountains. Spurred on by Tom (Paul Bettany, Master and Commander), who fancies himself the town's moral guide, the citizens of Dogville first resist Grace, then embrace her, then resent and torment her--little realizing they will pay a price for their selfish brutality. The town is indicated by fragments of building and chalk outlines on a soundstage floor, stylishly pointing to the movie's roots in classic plays (particularly Thornton Wilder's Our Town and Friedrich Durrenmatt's The Visit). Several critics have stridently attacked Dogville as anti-American, but the movie's dark, compelling view applies as easily to Rwanda, Bosnia, the Middle East, or pretty much anywhere in the world. Also featuring Lauren Bacall, Patricia Clarkson, Jeremy Davies, Stellan Skarsgârd, Chloe Sevigny, and many more. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
Pedantic, obtuse, and unwatchable, this three-hour exercise in inept avant-gardism, written and directed by Lars Von Trier, is set in a town without walls, streets, or air-a conceptual Depression-era nowheresville in the American Rockies in which obvious allegories of conformity and viciousness are acted out by a cast reciting an inhuman language into the dead silence. We might be present at a nightmarish school play. With Nicole Kidman as the poor waif who eventually takes her revenge, Paul Bettany as a weak-willed artist, and a variety of other excellent actors submitting to Von Trier's solemnly stupid rituals of betrayal. The pompous narrator is John Hurt, who sounds like Henry Fielding wishing he had a tankard in his hand. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker