One of the most brilliant films to ever give credence to the palpability of dreaming came in the form of a gritty fairytale about a young factory worker attempting to save enough money to get her son the surgery he would need to keep from going blind. The funniest thing: it’s the blindness that allows her to see the true elegance of the living circus.
Dancer in the Dark was Björk’s film début and also served as the platform to the next level of her creative grace from the industrial kaleidoscope that was Homogenic --but more about that later.
The beauty intrinsic in Dancer in the Dark is this idea that we create our own universes. What 
we choose to see, hear, touch, smell, and think are all predicated on the elaborate nature of our dreams. Selma is a young mother with a hereditary disease that causes the eyesight to gradually diminish over time. However, given that her education level is not exactly going to make her the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, she works in an old factory (a job in which she cheated on an eye exam to procure) and in her off hours, she puts hair pins on cardboard backings to be sold in the prissy shops in which her affluent neighbour’s wife would shop. She’s been saving the extra money from his tedium to afford a life changing (and saving) operation for her son.
The two things in her world that bring her relief from the monotony that runs her day are her son and the community centre rendition of The Sound of Music, in which she plays the leading role of Maria. It’s this obsession with film musicals that shows Selma at her most ebullient. As an expat from Czechoslovakia, Selma is quiet, introverted, and exceptionally shy --until she’s working around the machines. Around the machines, she hears the most incredible sounds --intricate rhythms, beats like the heart dancing, exceptional musical landscapes. She’s completely at ease with the work, though she does manage at times to muck it up, becoming a catalyst to the eventual demise of our quiet heroine.
Her landlord, Bill, a local policeman with an allegedly grand inheritance, has allowed Selma and her son to live on his land in a small mobile home. He walks in one night and wails in her arms that he has no more money --his prissy wife continues to ask for money and he continues to give it to her. This series of events leads to the most devastating film to come 
out of the early 2000s. Through her desire to help her son, Selma is torn from her happy world of music and forcibly made to interact with aspects of her life that lead to her being on trial for murder. Eventually Bill begs for Selma to kill him (after he’s stolen all the money she’s saved for her son’s operation and told his wife that it was, in fact, Selma who stole the money from him). Her lack of sight hinders her from shooting him, so she pummels his face with the metal safety box that he was using to stash her money.
What helps her cope with the realisation that she’s taken another human’s life: music.
Selma sees everything as a symphony, an elaborate musical sequence. Even when she eventually goes completely blind, she proclaims she’s seen it all, there’s nothing else to see. She has her ears, after all, and that’s all that she needs to make it through her life. Eventually, with circumstantial evidence that she’s unable to refute, she’s convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to be 
hung from the neck until dead. It’s this last scene that remains burned in my mind. Not because of the cruelty of hanging someone (an act that will always cause me to shiver). No, it’s the music. Taking the 107 steps to the gallows, Selma, again, envisions a musical sequence that allows her mind to take in the harsh reality that she’s, indeed, going to die. As she makes her way to the rope, she is informed that the money stolen from her was recovered and her son’s operation was a success. With that, she sings the pivotal song in The Sound of Music (and the first song we hear Selma sing in the opening scene), “A Few of my Favourite Things.” Before she can finish, the executioner pulls the lever and Selma dangles from the deathly necktie that strangles her.
It can be said that Lars von Trier was overambitious, even overindulgent. Many have even noted that any other director from America would’ve been laughed out of Hollywood. The truth is, with its many plot holes and at times off-putting cinematography, there’s nothing but pure feeling in this film. It’s frightening, depressing, heartbreaking, and elaborately beautiful. The gritty nature of the camera work is nothing original, but it’s certainly that much more grating to the flesh, it gets so close to you.
Of course, one can’t forget to mention Selma’s music, aptly titled Selmasongs. The soundtrack was completely conceived by Björk and managed to be a convincing bridge between the industrial simplicity of Homogenic and the bare complexity of Médulla. The songs harkened to the grandiosity of the musicals of the early 50s, yet managed to warp the ears with the machine-funk that saturated much of Björk’s earlier albums (á la Post). If there’s something that critics and fans alike can agree on, Björk brought more soul to this part than any trained actress could have. Because it was her first foray into acting, you could believe her coquettish naivety. Because she has a penchant for the musically grand and sonically eloquent, you understood Selma as a specimen of the degradation through which humans are put.
Dancer in the Dark appealed to me much in the same way that watching scenes from the Holocaust or the graphic lynch mob scenes from Rosewood, FL: palpably honest, too close for comfort, forcing you to question your own humanity. With an aching heart, I can’t help but feel as though Dancer in the Dark is a cinematic feat that may not be repeated in a lifetime. The right amount of newness and ingenuity created a moment in time that was at once graphic and beautiful.
As unexpected as her path was to loving all things weird, more unexpected is her ability to get attention for writing about the stuff. From Japanese horror and Korean melodrama, to the acid soaked animation of the 70s, Camiele White loves to talk about, debate, and watch film that teases, pleases, and fucks with the senses. Right now, she gets her jabberjaw jollies writing about Halloween costumes. If you want to give her a buzz, she can be reached at cmlewhite at gmail [dot] com.
