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Manderlay

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Manderlay (2006)

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Reviews Counted:95

Fresh:48

Rotten:47

Average Rating:5.6/10

Consensus: Manderlay may work better as a political statement than as a film, making its points at the expense of telling a compelling story.

Runtime: 2 hrs 19 mins

Genre: Dramas

US Box Office: $0

Synopsis: This is the strange, disturbing story of the Manderlay plantation. Manderlay lay on a lonely plain somewhere in the deep south of the USA. It was in the year of 1933 that Grace and her father... This is the strange, disturbing story of the Manderlay plantation. Manderlay lay on a lonely plain somewhere in the deep south of the USA. It was in the year of 1933 that Grace and her father had left the township of Dogville behind them. Grace's father and his army of villains had spent the entire winter seeking out new hunting grounds in vain, and now they were heading south in one last attempt to find a favourable location in which to take up residence. By chance their cars stop in the state of Alabama in front of a large iron gate bearing a thick chain and a padlock. Beside the gate, a dead oak tree towers over a heavy boulder with Manderlay hewn in monumental letters into the granite. Just as Grace, her father and his men are about to leave after a short break and a quick lunch, a young black woman runs up to the car. She knocks on Grace's window. She hammers at the glass in despair. Ignoring her father’s advice to leave others to their own affairs, Grace follows the girl through the gates of Manderlay and there, she finds a group of people living as if slavery had not been abolished seventy years earlier, with white masters and black slaves... Grace believes that she has a duty to make it up to the slaves for injustices they have suffered at the hands of her kind: 'we brought them here, we abused them and made them what they are', as she argues to her father; and she decides that having liberated Manderlay, she will remain at the plantation until she has seen them through their first harvest. Her father grudgingly leaves her with four henchmen and a lawyer, warning Grace that he won't be there to pick up the pieces when her plans for the resurrection of Manderlay fall apart... --© IFC Films [More]

Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach de Bankolé, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe

Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach de Bankolé, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, Michael Abiteboul, Lauren Bacall, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier, John Hurt, Chloe Sevigny

Director: Lars von Trier

Director: Lars von Trier
Screenwriter: Lars von Trier
Producer: Vibeke Windelov
Studio: IFC Films

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Reviews for Manderlay

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1 - 20 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
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Full Review Source: In Film Australia | comment Comment
12/30/06
Luke Buckmaster
Luke Buckmaster
In Film Australia
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

I was intrigued by the intensity and audaciousness of Dogville, but Manderlay feels stagey, earnest, long and pretentious. Its grainy, shaky hand-held camera-work only adds to the monotony.

Full Review Source: Urban Cinefile | comment Comment
11/24/06
Urban Cinefile Critics
Urban Cinefile Critics
Urban Cinefile
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Cinema Crazed | comment Comment
04/29/09
Felix Vasquez Jr.
Felix Vasquez Jr.
Cinema Crazed
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Boston Phoenix | comment Comment
04/23/09
Peter Keough
Peter Keough
Boston Phoenix

"Manderlay" shows von Trier learning from that film's stylistic mistakes to make an ambitious and thought-provoking allegory about the ways in which "slavery" in America was never truly abolished, but rather converted to a different condition of capitalis

Full Review Source: ColeSmithey.com | comment Comment
04/15/09
Cole Smithey
Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com

It doesn't offer much insight into America's race issues, which might seem at first to be its target, but it works very well as a metaphor for America's intervention in Iraq.

Full Review Source: Paste Magazine | comment Comment
06/03/08
Robert Davis
Robert Davis
Paste Magazine

If this trilogy finishes up strong, this middle portion may come to be seen as the weakest, though it's still forceful and intimate in the von Trier manner.

Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | comment Comment
09/27/07
Rob Gonsalves
Rob Gonsalves
eFilmCritic.com

[It] raises interesting questions about what can happen in a democracy when its people are deeply corrupt. ... But likely to be more disheartened than enlightened.

Full Review Source: Looking Closer | comment Comment
09/12/07
Jeffrey Overstreet
Jeffrey Overstreet
Looking Closer

this Great Dane backs up his satiric bark with a vicious bite.

Full Review Source: Eye for Film | comment Comment
08/02/07
Anton Bitel
Anton Bitel
Eye for Film

A slightly more ponderous - if less dramatically satisfying - example of a Von Trier puppet show.

Full Review Source: Projection Booth | comment Comment
07/03/07
Rob Humanick
Rob Humanick
Projection Booth

Relying on a daring script as executed by A-list actors, offers a potentially transformational experience for any inclined to contemplate an introspective, gut-wrenching meditation on the intractability of the legacy of slavery.

Full Review Source: DallasBlack.com | comment Comment
05/20/07
Kam Williams
Kam Williams
DallasBlack.com

Manderlay is shorter but just as dull, pretentious and condescending as Dogville.

Full Review Source: Film Journal International | comment Comment
03/01/07
Maria Garcia
Maria Garcia
Film Journal International
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Observer [UK] | comment Comment
01/20/07
Philip French
Philip French
Observer [UK]

Manderlay loses in power what it lacks in novelty, even though it's more relevant than anything the year is likely to bring.

Full Review Source: AV Club | comment Comment
11/27/06
Scott Tobias
Scott Tobias
AV Club

The audience's familiarity with the stylistic devices of Manderlay should allow the film's more reflective screenplay to shine through.

Full Review Source: Sight and Sound | comment Comment
09/28/06
Ryan Gilbey
Ryan Gilbey
Sight and Sound

... an anti-American rant that tediously plays out as a misplaced lecture by the pretentious filmmaker.

Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews | comment Comment
08/24/06
Dennis Schwartz
Dennis Schwartz
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

Watching this film is an edifying but frustrating experience; dull in parts, amusing and illuminating in others. You’d still struggle to call it entertainment.

Full Review Source: Time Out | comment Comment
06/24/06
Dave Calhoun
Dave Calhoun
Time Out

Dig that freaky symbolism!

Full Review Source: New York Magazine | comment Comment
05/12/06
David Edelstein
David Edelstein
New York Magazine

Unstintingly raw and cynical.

Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | comment Comment
04/01/06
David Parkinson
David Parkinson
Empire Magazine
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Picks at the painful sores of America's racial legacy while withholding the brotherhood-of-man epiphanies that made the Oscar-validated 'Crash' a healing experience for many moviegoers...

Full Review Source: Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) | comment Comment
03/31/06
John Beifuss
John Beifuss
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
 
 
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