by Scott Whalen

There's nothing like Dancer in the Dark Ñ nothing at all. Wacky, weird and wonderful at times and suddenly brilliant, compelling, frustrating and excruciating at others, this dark drama melded with a musical format is nothing if not original.

Like many great films, Dancer in the Dark is love-it-or-hate-it moviegoing. Many have called it one of the best films ever made. In fact, the Cannes Film Festival awarded the movie the Palme D'Or, their highest honour. Others will say that Dancer, with its quirky narrative, strange acting, and unusual songs, was one of the worst movies of last year. I'll cop out and say the movie is both good and bad Ñ a little like life often is.

Written and directed by Lars Van Trier (Breaking the Waves), Dancer in the Dark follows the story of Czechoslovakian immigrant Selma and her son Gene. They are befriended by their landlords, cop Bill (David Morse), his wife Jean (Cara Seymour) and Selma's coworker Kathy (Catherine Deneuve). Selma, who is played remarkably by Icelandic pop star Bjork, works at a metal pressing plant in Washington State and is slowly going blind. She is valiantly working to save enough money for an operation for Gene, so he does not go blind. Selma escapes the struggle of her day to day life by rehearsing the part of Maria in an amateur production of The Sound of Music. She loves the songs, but is struggling to hide her growing visual impairment from the director and her fellow actors.

The dark story of Selma's struggle is the main plotline of Dancer in the Dark. It is a bleak, sad portrait of a difficult life and it wallows in this sadness. At times, the struggle seems to be too much to watch. But it's at those moments that Van Trier has skillfully used musical numbers as a pressure valve for the tragedy of the story. Bjork sparkles in those musical moments, as she always has, but she also intrigues in her dramatic, non-musical performance. There are moments, howeverÑ like the physical struggle between Selma and Bill Ñ where her melodrama doesn't seem to work, but overall Bjork impresses in this role, just as another rock star turned actress, Courtney Love, did in The People Vs. Larry Flynt. It's casting genius to let Bjork inhabit this role.

The movie Van Trier gives us is off the beaten track. The camera moves in a seesaw rhythm and the look of the film is often grainy and dreamy. Like a Bjork song, this is a brilliant view of what is "off centre," out on the fringes Ñ and the stunning truth that lies there. Van Trier takes delight in the everyday poetry of things like train tracks and trailers, cutlery and bicycles. His characters speak haltingly, but magically and poetically. Like Selma, he sees the poetry and music in everyday life and brings that to the screen.

Then at other moments, Dancer is dull as dishwater. It's really, really depressing and you feel tired and sad just looking at it. Some scenes seem poorly executed and the acting is beyond stilted. However, just when you think you may have had enough, the film rebounds and even astounds. One of my favorite moments is the musical sequence for "I've Seen It All," the Bjork song nominated for an Academy Award. Walking along train tracks with her friend Jeff, Selma passionately sings about her life, as a crew of train workers accompany her. Selma is escaping through this song and we are transported by it too. The music and song are not just inserted because they will "fit," they actually advance the plot and give the viewer a moment to pause and think. The problem is that for those of us who know Bjork's work well, it will seem like we've seen all this before, especially in her astounding music videos.

Nonetheless from that high in the film, the movie crashes again into a bleak prison drama. However, even at its lowest moments, Dancer still intrigues. I wonder how many moviegoers gave up on it, only to be surprised and interested once again as the plot shifted in a new direction. This is a challenging film for anyone, certainly. Its peaks are higher because its valleys are lower and just when you think you have it figured out, it changes again. If you're patient, however, Dancer in the Dark delivers rewards. The trick is to give yourself up to it, take the ride and let the movie take you where it will.

Scott Whalen is a journalism instructor at Loyalist College in Belleville