| "Manderlay" by Lars von Trier on Moscow screens If we were to meticulously follow Lars von Trier's creative principles, then a review of Manderley, the second part of his "American trilogy", would need to be divided into eight chapters and each given a subtitle. And the first would definitely be the chapter “in which Grace and her father change faces.” Despite the fact that America has remained since the time of “Dogville” the same huge pavilion lined with chalk dotted lines, lined with houses with invisible walls, familiar heroes have changed their appearance. Grace left Dogville in the guise of Nicole Kidman, and in the next seat of a black authoritative car with her was her father, James Caan, and Bryce Dallas Howard and William Dafoe, respectively, had already arrived in Manderlay, Alabama. Be that as it may, Grace found herself in front of the gates of Manderlay, and a black woman immediately ran up to her and began to beg Grace to stop the scourging of another black man tied to the bars of the fence. Going inside, Grace discovers that slavery has not yet been abolished in Manderley. With the help of daddy's henchmen (or rather, the machine guns of daddy's henchmen), Grace abolishes slavery by a strong-willed decision and decides to stay in Manderley for a while to help former slaves learn freedom. And this despite the fact that dad reminded her of an instructive story about a bird that Grace had once released from its cage, and the very next morning it froze under the window, unaccustomed to its new state.
Grace will have to be convinced pretty soon that the black inhabitants of Manderlay are not birds. During the period until the father promised to return, a lot of things will happen (up to a sandstorm, which looks convincing even in conventional settings), the oppressors will change places with the humiliated several times, many things will turn out to be completely different from what they looked like at first glance, and the tied to the bars, the black Timothy, with whom it all began, will eventually return to the place of execution. But the whip will now be in Grace’s hand.
If "Dogville" was to a certain extent inspired by "The Threepenny Opera", then the plot of "Manderlay" was born from Trier after meeting the preface to "The Story of O" by Pauline Réage (a classic pulp novel about masochism, the film adaptation of which, by the way, at one time played by Trier's favorite Udo Kier, who also appears in "Manderlay"), which was written by Jean Polhan. In an article entitled “Happiness in Slavery,” he recalled a real case in the middle of the last century, when in Barbados, freed black slaves killed the family of their former owner, who refused to accept them back into slavery. In Manderley there are no special atrocities, but the result is similar.
The film, perhaps, does not imply any unusual interpretations - everything that the viewer needs to know and understand will be shown on the screen and explained in a voice-over. It’s possible to see Grace’s adventures on the plantations as a metaphor for America’s attitude towards third world countries or some other socialism, but it’s somehow uninteresting. "Manderlay" is so perfect from a purely cinematic point of view that it would be a shame to exchange it for primitive journalism. Thanks to the fantastic cinematography by Anthony Mantle, the conventional world of gardens and paths drawn on the floor turns out to be absolutely unpretentious and three-dimensional. And the inhabitants of the plantations are not types (although in the arch of the “mother’s laws”, which Grace found under the bed of the deceased mistress of Manderlai, all slaves are divided into categories in an almost classic tradition (Negro Clone, Negro Boltun, a sung, a crazy black man and so on ), but quite individual people. So, paradoxically, it is not a particular case that grows to the scale of a parable, but the parable itself turns into a private story, such that in a hundred years it may well end up as an instructive example in the preface to a reprint. some piquant boulevardism. Stanislav F. ROSTOTSKY |
|
