Dancer in the Dark

Yesterday was uneventful. For a Monday, that is always good news. I began to make arrangements to get an appraisal on my car – I should know by tomorrow how much it’ll cost my company to fix it. Went in late because of this virus thing I caught. Went home early ’cause it was just that sort of day.

I did find that I miscalculated my vacation days this year (don’t ask me how). I knew I’d be taking one unpaid day over Christmas this year, but now it appears I’ll actually be taking two unpaid days. [grrrrrrr] I think the next time one of my European friends boasts about their six weeks of vacation a year, I may just go ballistic.

Last night, after dinner, The Prof and I watched “Dancer in the Dark”. I had very much wanted to see this movie when it came out, but it received only limited play at theaters around here, and I never got the opportunity. I’d been meaning to rent it for a while, but at two hours and twenty minutes I kept putting it off until I was sure I’d have a big enough block of time to watch it.

I like Björk. I find her singing almost ethereal at times. She has a voice unique in the industry today. It can be simultaneously grating and yet very emotive. She has a voice that forces you to listen to it, to get past the warble and quiver and listen to the music itself. I own nothing of hers, but I always stop and listen when my station plays her. I worship Catherine Deneuve. She takes chances on the movies she’ll do, and the movies are always better for it. “East-West” was a masterpiece, in no small part because of her role. “Place Vendome” owed much of it’s success to her. And Joel Grey, who had a bit part in the movie, can do no wrong. So what the heck were they thinking, when they made this movie?

Spoilers here on out. If you have any intention of renting this movie and want to be surprised, do not read further.

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I knew going into it that the movie was about a young single mother, going blind from a degenerative inherited eye disease. She was saving for an operation for her son, so that he would not go blind. What I didn’t know is that this was a musical! And a poorly acted one at that. Björk has two acting modes – flat and befuddled, and singing and happy. In the movie she plays Selma, a woman who lives her life doing factory work and whatever additional make-shift jobs she can fit in and spending as much free time as she can day-dreaming that her life is a musical. There is a musical number at the factory where she works, just before she breaks an important piece of equipment. There is a musical number along the train tracks that she follows to get home because she’s lost too much eyesight to see her way along the streets with her bike. There is a murder musical number. There is a courtroom musical number (with Joel Grey tapdancing on the judge’s desk just before the “guilty” verdict is read). There is a (gods help us) death row muscial number as she walks the 107 steps to the noose, counting each step. There is musical number as she waits with the rope about her neck. You want it to be funny – like Monty Python’s Life of Brian. But this is no parody. This is supposed to be a genuine drama.

She’s poor. She’s saved $2,056.10 for her son’s operation. She knows the amount to the penny. It is stolen from her not once, but twice. She is lied to, cheated, fired from her job, and has troubles with her son. The great joy of her life is her community drama class, where she is selected to play Maria in the local production of “The Sound of Music” even though it is apparent she can neither sing nor dance particularly well. This is the stuff that tragedies are made of. Except that they keep breaking out into songs fit for 40’s musicals. And dancing.

I’m not sure what this movie was trying to be. I’m suspect it was supposed to be a scathing look at the death penalty, at the lack of medical support for the poor, at society’s views of immigrants (especially in the early sixties, the era this was set in). And it apparently worked for a lot of reviewers. Overall, this movie got great reviews.

But at the end, when she begins singing while the noose is about her neck and they’re waiting for the floor to open beneath her, all I could do was roll my eyes and be glad the credits weren’t far off.