dancer in the dark

over the holidays, my yin and i watched Dancer in the Dark while staying at her mother's house. for me, it was a night of vicarious nostalgia - sleeping in her old room, watching movies on a VCR, and eating cheese pizza from the neighborhood parlor of her childhood.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that i watched van Trier's Dogville a number of years ago, during a hazy return to my own (approximate) hometown. i remember being disturbed even through the anesthesia, and i wondered if Björk's star persona would overpower the film -

thankfully this was not the case.

in fact her presence only augmented the films affect, contributing an extratextual surreality to the already absurd juxtaposition of musical numbers with morose narrative tone. topping it off was the use of hand-held digital cameras, which washed out the whole film to create a powerfully bleak visual aesthetic.

i felt as if the monotony and sunlessness of Selma's impending blindness were my own, and the lack of color left tears in my yin's eyes as she spoke:

"it makes me cry every time i see it... i forget."