"Manderlay," the second film in Lars von Trier's "America: Land of Opportunities" trilogy, has the same distinctive bare aesthetic as its 2003 predecessor, "Dogville." While the style was daring in the first movie, it takes on a far more sinister tone in the sequel.
Rather than film using realistic sets, von Trier works on a vast, empty soundstage with minimal props. Lines painted on the floor represent invisible settings. Everything else is shrouded in blackness and light illuminates various parts of the soundstage to follow the plot.
The stark, visual superficiality parallels the film's coldly clinical examination of American hypocrisy. Although the Danish von Trier has never visited the United States because he fears flying, in "Manderlay," he questions fundamental principles of America's government and society.
Seventy years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) stumbles upon Manderlay, a secluded Alabama plantation where slavery has continued to thrive. After freeing the slaves and enslaving their former masters, Grace assumes that the freemen will be grateful and start their lives anew with rights and freedoms. Instead, she finds the consequences of the heroic liberation far from simple.
The resistant ex-slaves are frightened of independence and suspicious of the heroine's motives. Grace, therefore, is forced into the role of a dictator. She imposes democracy and self-sufficiency upon the freedmen while she works to unravel the psychological slavery that was the secret to Manderlay's longevity.
A large part of the film is a character study, examining Grace's struggles as a liberator-cum-activist. Driven by what she sees as a moral debt to the slaves for white Americans' cruelty, Grace becomes frustrated when the freedmen reject her idealism and self-sacrifice with casual animosity.
The film's overall message is fairly simple, and one that von Trier seems to suggest is applicable to America's sojourn in Iraq. "Manderlay" argues that liberation by force is rarely the best solution because both the liberators and the liberated become confined and tortured by the outcome.
Unfortunately, the reality of "Manderlay" does not live up to the film's provocative conceit. The movie is ultimately not about Grace, or any other character; rather, it is about what happens when an outsider imposes social change on a system of self-guided ethics and economics. John Hurt's voice-over narration is dry and clinical, and a number of superior actors, including Howard and Danny Glover, are reduced to puppets that von Trier uses to prove his point.
While there is something to be said for a film with brains, philosophical discussions in "Manderlay" are so frigid that it is difficult to connect emotionally with the characters.
When, during the ending credits, David Bowie's "Young Americans" plays over a collage of real photographs of African-American oppression, it is clear that von Trier is asking the audience to make an association between the film and current events.
Ultimately, however, it is unclear what exactly that association is, so the meaning falls flat. "Manderlay" prompts a raised eyebrow but little more.
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