With a rich legacy of experimental filmmakers who have devoted their careers to these ideas, Trier’s experiment can superficially seem redundant. Filmmakers like Michael Snow and Stan Brakhage have already pared the medium down to its barest qualities, removing the need for story, action, and actor as a means of revealing a simple, albeit challenging, cinematic identity. Light, an obsession of one of Dogville’s inhabits, emerges as the essential quality needed in film (I wonder if any film has better expressed this then Michael Snow’s La Region Centrale, when night falls and scenery fades and only the moon persists in fragmented images that momentarily illuminate the screen.), as even a black and empty screen has been projected using light; film can only be defined by its luminosity, as everything else is too exclusive.
If we are to pin down the identity of a painting as some kind of canvas with paint, film becomes increasingly difficult to define in these terms in the digital age. Light can easily define most visual mediums, and as many filmmakers have devoted their craft to exploring its qualities, as have many artists. One immediately think of the impressionists, who with up-rise of manufactured and flexible paint were able to bring the aisle outdoors and capture in real time with great ease the infinite subtleties of refracted light. It is J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), a pre-Impressionist, who defined his work through light more than any other artist.
Turner is best known for his depictions of nature, particularly its tumultuous and unpredictable side. Many of his best known paintings depicted storm, fire and fog: especially in how they transform and
reflect light. Turner’s later work is downright abstract, and detail is obliterated in favour of games of light as he attempted to capture its formless pervasiveness. Unlike the impressionists, this obsession was not a study in texture or optics. Though observational, his work was extremely expressionistic. His work seemingly a searching for a spiritual reconciliation. His play with light a means of capturing a complex relationship with a contradictory Christian deity.
This may seem like a far cry from the work of Lars Von Trier, whose films often seem self-consciously opposed to traditional forms of spirituality. His work, though, engages directly with the human concept of self-identity, especially as tied with ego. This abstract relationship between subject and perception tie Trier to the experiential qualities of artists like Turner. Light becomes totally unifying, a formal and thematic tool.
In “Chapter 3: In which Grace indulges in a shady piece of provocation,” Grace hints at her true and flawed nature. Grace’s visits to Jack McKay (Ben Gazzara) did not involve her helping him with menial work, she served solely as a companion to a lonely old man who never left his home. The defining characteristic of his home are dark curtains that hide away the light, although everyone knows that he is blind, he has refused to admit it to himself or the world. Grace yanks open these curtains and pulls him out of his delusion. He proceeds to describe the quality of light he cannot even see, saying:
“In Switzerland they call it the Alpenglunen. That’s the light that reflects from the highest peaks after the sun goes down behind the mountains and now it’s gone.”
The light itself is a glowing ochre. Ochre is often a golden-yellow, but there exists a darker version that can be akin to a red. A true Alpenglunen has a reddish hue, and as beautiful as it may be, its peculiarity invokes hellish imagery – primal, primitive. Ochre is one of the most ancient of colours at the disposal of humanity. Found readily around in the world, the ochre pigment is most often derived from mineral oxide deposits in clay. It is used in most pre-historic art, and some argue that the earliest example of painting include a variation on the ochre colour.
This scene is a first hint at Grace’s true and basic nature. The devolution of Dogville is tied to a primary sin in every inhabitant, and though Grace becomes the victim of their collective ego, she is not innocent herself. That does not justify the treatment she receives by any means, but it certainly makes it more interesting. This scene reveals an innate flaw in both social structure and the experiment at hand. The “problem” with Dogville is not something that was created; it existed from the beginning.
The natural and cyclical way that the people of Dogville fall into a pattern of oppression and abuse is pointedly ironic. The twisted view of charity as being two-sided and the people’s own poverty and 
As Grace reflects on her actions, which forced Jack McKay to admit his blindness, she fears that he will turn against her and she will be ejected from the small town has that has provided her comfort in a time of need. The scene certainly marks a turning point in the narrative, and shows fear as a motivator for both the greatest and the lowest human action.
Standing in that golden-ochre light is something else at play here. The natural pre-disposition of humanity towards cruelty and oppression emerges, but so does its appreciation for beauty. In that light one can scarce believe someone could even see the landscape, but it stands before Grace in all of it’s majesty. Even Jack McKay, in his hazy memories of landscapes and the words of writers, is somehow taken by the beauty of the moment in spite of the incredible sorrow that is befalling him. It is why the moment, which could easily have seemed so cruel, feels so soft.
Dogville, with its bare locales, is similarly able to evoke the beauty and majesty of a world that artists have struggled from the beginning to describe. Art, through the touch of humanity, transforms landscape and universe into something new. Trier’s vision may paint a dire portrait of a doomed social structure but it nonetheless offers to it’s audience a unique splendor that flourishes in the minimalist setting. Trier’s art is magnificent, and he embodies what Picasso once said: “There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.” Humanity’s inevitable doom is not tragic as much as it is a tragedy. We have a fatal flaw to explain our downfall, but it exists amidst many joys, beauties and talents that have allowed our species to flourish. They may take a backseat in the broad allegory of oppression, but they exist nonetheless in the confidence and beauty of Trier’s craft.
Justine Smith