If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Viewed at Valladolid, 2006: The big cash prize of 50,000 Euros, the 50th Anniversary Prize commemorating the fifty years of the Seminci festival, was in fact shared ("ex-aequo" is the elegant Latin term) by the two festival favorites, Austrian Michael Haneke, for his puzzling French thriller, "Caché" (Hidden), and the quirky Dane, Lars von Trier, for his pseudo-American successor to "Dogville", "Manderlay". From a purely personal point of view I must say that I regard Von Trier films as an acquired taste (like poison) which I have never acquired -- in fact I have always found them rather revolting and have never been able to sit through one of his schizzy nightmares from beginning to end -- although I did sort of make it through "Dogville" -- by sheer will power, with many cigarette breaks -- but mainly because of a fascination with Nicole Kidman's uncannily shapely nose. In short I thought "Dogville" was nothing but pretentious b*****t, and I couldn't believe that an actress like Lauren Bacall lent her prestige to it, but -- I have to admit -- against my better judgement -- that I actually (sort of) liked "Manderlay". For one thing, Bacall, who was wooden in "Dogville", dies off in the first ten minutes, "Grace", who was Kidman in the first installment of this projected trilogy, has now metamorphosed into a less glamorous but far more credible actress, Bryce Dallas Howard, and a ponderous James Caan as Grace's gangster father, has been replaced by a more digestible (if slightly ridiculous) Willem Defoe, but what really makes "Manderlay" work as a drama (rather than a pretentious lecture on the sad state of the world and the decay of the American Dream ) is the excellent cast of black actors, especially Danny Glover, but all uniformly good -- who somehow infuse this Von Trier head game with some real soul. Another thing which helps, is that Von Trier has mercifully gotten a little away from the overweaning Monopoly Board sets and invisible clicking doors which made "Dogville" unbearable after the first half hour. There is still, in "Manderlay", a certain amount of the artificial Monopoly Board geometry in place, but not so much that it totally distracts as it did in the earlier film. Who knows, maybe Part III will be set on a Ouija Board -- in any case, "Manderlay" has a certain feeling going for it that makes it far more watchable than any of Von Trier's previous sessions of celluloid sado-masochism.The title, incidentally, has nothing to do with Kipling•s Mandalay, but is a co-opting of the name of the spooky mansion in Hitchcock's "Rebeccah". Here it is the name of a strange Alabama plantation where, in 1933, slavery is still going on and the slaves seem to like it that way -- for as head slave Danny Glover (great role) puts it, "We ain't reddy fo' no freedom yet -- we's better off dis way".

I had some difficulty wrapping my head around a production that was in part stage work (a play instead of a movie), and in part documentary. The story which is meant to educate people about a terrible period in American History, when the treatment of slaves and pseudo slaves was still practiced for a long time. The movie also makes a valiant attempt at the morality issues of the times. The ensemble cast was superb. I however could not see the reasoning in making such a project (low inde budget), since the target audiences, or even audiences in general, were not going to be satisfied by this and tune out very early. I rather think it was indulgent to go ahead anyway; the commercial flop it turned out to be only tells me the producers should have tripled the budget and more the make this a fully fledged feature movie. There at least would have been a real audience for it; that audience would have received the message the producers and cast wanted to make. But hey, it's just my humble opinions.

The way that director Lars Von Trier can point his finger so solemnly and self-importantly at a country he's never lived in is insufferable. The look of the film is tough on the eyes to watch. Can't a serious film be at least mildly pleasing aesthetically? I'd hope so. Cinema is a visual art form after all. And Von Trier's message? Moronic obvious nonsense about slavery still existing 70 years later, the fact that capitalism itself becomes slavery, and comparing Grace's (Bryce Dallas Howard) fight to end the slavery at Manderlay with the U.S. invasion of Iraq. As in "Dogville", Von Trier has no concept of what he speaks. Thankfully I didn't pay to see the movie so I'm glad he didn't reap any rewards from me or my crew.

My first, belated run-in with von Trier is this hyper-extended, unfathomably brutal condemnation of white youth activism's ahistorical egotism. At least, that's what I got out of it: the loathsomely self-righteous Bryce Dallas Howard's attempts to 'educate' a community of newly-freed Southern slaves and their masters may be intended as a metaphor for globalization or something, but there's more than enough to chew on right there on the surface. Especially for someone who has spent his own time wrestling with the culture-bound, missionary pitfalls of liberation rhetoric. The minimalist lines-on-the-studio-floor design job directs your full attention to the brilliant cast, who seem perfectly and improbably attuned to this snooty outsider's vision of America. On this evidence von Trier would be this century's Carl-Theodor Dreyer: brilliant and compelling, but not exactly the life of the party. My attention never wandered, and it's a good thing because otherwise I wouldn't have enjoyed the full impact of the mind-bending wrap-up. Docked a mark for being so hard to endure, even though (or because) that's the point.