Manderlay

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Manderlay
Directed by Lars von Trier
Produced by Gillian Berrie, Peter Aalbæk Jensen, Signe Jensen, Els Vandevorst and Vibeke Windeløv
Written by Lars von Trier
Starring Bryce Dallas Howard,
Willem Dafoe
Release date(s) May 16, 2005 (Premiere)
Running time 139 min.
Language English
Preceded by Dogville
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile
For the fictional estate, see Manderley; for the Burmese city, see Mandalay.

Manderlay is a sequel to the movie Dogville. It is the second part of Lars von Trier's trilogy USA - Land of Opportunities. Bryce Dallas Howard replaces Nicole Kidman in the role of Grace. The movie also features Willem Dafoe, Lauren Bacall and Chloë Sevigny.

Contents

[edit] Staging

The staging is very similar to Dogville. The film was shot on a sparsely dressed sound stage. As in the case of Dogville, Manderlay's action is confined to a small geographic area, in this case a plantation.

[edit] Plot summary

The film "Manderlay" is told in eight straight chapters

  • Chapter ONE: In which we happen upon Manderlay and meet the people there
  • Chapter TWO: "The freed enterprise of Manderlay"
  • Chapter THREE: "The Old Lady's Garden"
  • Chapter FOUR: In which Grace means business
  • Chapter FIVE: "Shoulder to Shoulder"
  • Chapter SIX: Hard times at Manderlay
  • Chapter SEVEN: "Harvest"
  • Chapter EIGHT: In which Grace settles with Manderlay and the film ends

Set in the early 1930s, the film takes up the story of Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her father (Willem Dafoe) after burning the town of Dogville at the end of the previous film. Grace and her father travel in convoy with a number of gunmen through rural Alabama where they stop briefly outside a plantation called Manderlay. As the gangsters converse, a black woman emerges from Manderlay's front gates complaining that someone is about to be whipped for stealing a bottle of wine. Grace enters the plantation and learns that within it, slavery persists, roughly 70 years after the American Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. Grace is appalled, and insists on staying at the plantation with a small contingent of gunmen and her father's lawyer, Joseph, in order to guarantee the slaves' safe transition to freedom. Shortly after Grace's father and the remaining gangsters depart, Mam (Lauren Bacall), the master of the house, dies, but not before asking Grace to burn a notebook containing "Mam's Law," an exhaustive code of conduct for the entire plantation and all its inhabitants, free and slave. She reads the descriptions of each variety of slave that can be encountered, which include:

  • Group 1: Proudy Nigger
  • Group 2: Talkin' Nigger
  • Group 3: Weepin' Nigger
  • Group 4: Hittin' Nigger
  • Group 5: Clownin' Nigger
  • Group 6: Loser Nigger
  • Group 7: Pleasing Nigger (also known as a chameleon, a person of the kind who can transform himself into exactly the type the beholder would like to see)

The principal seven divisions are each populated by a single adult slave at Manderlay, who congregate daily and converse on a "parade ground," with roman numerals of the numbers 1 through 7 designating where each slave stands. "Mam's Law" contains further provisions against the use of cash by slaves, or the felling of trees on the property for timber.

All of this information disgusts Grace, and inspires her to take charge of the plantation in order to punish the slave owners and prepare the slaves for life as free individuals. In order to guarantee that the former slaves will not continue to be exploited as sharecroppers, Grace orders Joseph to draw up contracts for all Manderlay's inhabitants, institutionalizing a communistic form of cooperative living in which the white family works as slaves and the blacks collectively own the plantation and its crops. Throughout this process, Grace lectures all those present about the notions of freedom and democracy, using rhetoric entirely in keeping with the ideology of racial equality which most contemporary Americans had yet to embrace. However as the film progresses, Grace fails to embed these principles in Manderlay's community in a form she considers satisfactory. Furthermore, her suggestions for improving the conditions of the community backfire on several occasions, such as using the surrounding trees for timber, which leaves the crops vulnerable to dust storms. After a year of such tribulations, the community harvests its cotton and successfully sells it, only to have the proceeds stolen by one of the former slaves. At this point it is revealed that "Mam's Law" was not conceived and enforced by Mam or any of the other whites, but instead by Wilhelm (Danny Glover), the community's eldest member, as a means of maintaining the status quo after the abolition of slavery, protecting the blacks from a hostile outside world. As in many von Trier films, the idealistic main character becomes frustrated by the reality he or she encounters.

During production a donkey was slaughtered for "dramatic purposes". Because of this, actor John C Reilly quit his role. The scene was then cut from the film before it was released.[1]

[edit] Cast

[edit] References

  1. ^ Cruelty to Animals in the Entertainment Business : Cruel Camera - Cruelty on Film : the fifth estate : CBC News

[edit] External links

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Movies by Lars von Trier