film

Sterling performances from Nicole Kidman and Paul Bettany light up this characteristically polarising piece by the king of polarisation himself, Lars von Trier. An allegory about the nature and culture of America, Dogville's three hours play out in their entirety on a bare sound stage - still an extraordinary creative decision 21 years later and one that worked brilliantly, provisioning as it does the starkest possible setting for the starkest possible message.

Kidman plays Grace, a mysterious woman on the run from gangsters who seeks refuge with "the good, honest folk of Dogville". She is initially treated well but as the film's nine chapters progress, the townsfolk exploit her vulnerability and subject her to increasingly horrible cruelties. As one writer put it in the princess of rating Dogville the eighth-best film of the noughties, Von Trier served us "a homespun spider's web; a poisoned slice of apple pie; his own version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, repurposed for the Abu Ghraib generation".