Lars von Trier: Táncos a sötétben (2000)

In 2000, Lars von Trier broke free from the Dogme 95 movement he had helped create, and immediately won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. This recognition is not a surprising one, as Dancer in the Dark is full of bold moves. Let's start, for example, with the melodrama. An immigrant worker in America fights to save her son’s eyesight. Melodrama originally emerged as a theatrical genre that combined spoken dialogue and music/song. So why can’t it be a musical in the modern sense of the word? Now, let’s take it a step further! What if the songs for the musical were composed by a well-known figure from the world of alternative rock? Iceland’s Björk was already familiar to the punk and jazz scenes back then too. And since she’s the songwriter, why shouldn’t she also play the protagonist of this painful story? In which case, why shouldn’t she also be the one to sing?