By Nathaniel R
Catherine Deneuve, Björk, and Von Trier at Cannes (2000)
The floodgates have opened post Weinstein and now everyone wants to speak out. This morning Björk issued a statement about her experience working with "a Danish director," a hilariously coy non-naming of names since she's only starred in one movie, Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (2000) after which she never appeared in a movie again, unless you count her performance art collaboration with her then-boyfriend Matthew Barney on Drawing Restraint (2009). Which, well, the sexual violence was onscreen in that one with Barney and Björk carving each other up while naked underwater and turning into whales or some such. You know how that happens.
Here is her statement which is worth parsing due to its unexpected Dogville allusion...
It's no surprise that she uses the word "game" in regards to Lars von Trier's on set bullying. It's never been a secret that he's extremely difficult to work with or that he plays sadistic games with actors (he's a bit Hitchcockian in that way) or that he enjoys being difficult but thinks of it as playful. See: The Five Obstructions.
But it's her reference to Lars Von Trier's Dogville that's the eyebrow-raiser here. She writes:
The town of DOGVILLE piles on the abuse to out of towner Grace (Nicole Kidman)
i am sure of that the film he made after was based on his experiences with me. because i was the first one that stood up to him and didn't let him get away with it
Dogville, his excellent experimental film with Nicole Kidman is about many things (America, abuse, mob mentality, revenge, hypocrisy, religious piety, rape, xenophobia) but we never considered that it might also be about Dancer in the Dark and Björk!
She follows with:
and in my opinion he had a more fair and meaningful relationship with his actresses after my confrontation so there is hope
There is, of course, no way she could really know this. That said Nicole Kidman, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Uma Thurman, and Kirsten Dunst don't seem as bitter about their Lars von Trier experiences as Björk always has (her disdain for Von Trier is well known). Thurman and Gainsbourg have even returns for another film so perhaps she's right. Von Trier has not been shy about his own mental health issues (Melancholia is one of the greatest films ever made about depression) and at least Kidman and Dunst appear to be able to keep him in perspective / in line if their press conference appearances are indication.
We'll let Kiki have the last "word" with her famous reaction to von Trier infamously talking himself into 'Persona Non Grata' status at the Cannes press conference for Melancholia (2011)
