Manderlay
All actors and roles (10)
All team (172)
Short description
Grace and her father leave the small mountain community of Dogville in 1933 and travel toward Alabama. On the road they come upon Manderlay, an isolated plantation whose inhabitants still live under slavery, decades after it was abolished. Grace decides to stay and free the people who live behind its gates, and with men from her father's organization she sets about dismantling the old order and bringing in a new one. The task proves harder than she expects, and the people of the plantation do not receive her efforts as she imagined.
Lars von Trier wrote and directed the film, the ninth of the seventeen features he has directed in chronological order. It follows Dogville, from 2003, and precedes The Boss of It All, from 2006, forming the second part of his American trilogy. Bryce Dallas Howard plays Grace, taking over the role from Nicole Kidman; the cast also includes Isaach De Bankolé, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe and Lauren Bacall. Vibeke Windeløv produced, with Zentropa Entertainments among the production companies and a budget of 14 million dollars.
The film drew a mixed critical response, with a critics' rating of 5.9 out of 10 across 104 reviews. Audiences have been warmer: it holds 7.2 out of 10 on IMDb from around 26,000 votes, and 6.9 out of 10 on TMDB from several hundred.
What's left behind the scenes
- American actor John Reilly initially began filming in the role of Dr. Hector, but he suddenly left the project in the midst of production.
- Well-known African American actor Danny Glover, who played one of the slaves, initially refused the role, but accepted a subsequent offer.
- Initially, it was assumed that Nicole Kidman, who played Grace in "Dogville" (2003), would reprise the role in the other two films of the "USA – Land of Opportunities" trilogy. However, in July 2003, Nicole Kidman left the project as her participation conflicted with her other creative plans.
- James Caan, who played Grace’s father in "Dogville" (2003), stated in an interview that he declined to participate in the sequel for two reasons: firstly, because Nicole Kidman had left the project; and secondly, because he felt that Lars von Trier was, according to the actor, 'very anti-American, so to hell with him… I’m very pro-American. I’m a conservative – mostly.'
- The film’s plot was inspired by the foreword written by Jean Polan, a member of the French Academy, writer, and critic, to Pauline Réage’s notoriously famous novel “Story O,” titled “Happiness in Slavery.” This foreword begins with a description of a revolt by negroes that occurred on the island of Barbados in 1838. It started when, early one morning, several black men and women – former slaves who had recently been granted freedom by law – came to their former master, Mr. Glenelg, and asked him to make them slaves again. After talking to them, Glenelg refused. And then his former slaves began to threaten him, and then resorted to physical force – first moderately, and then with increasing fervor. It all ended with Mr. Glenelg and his entire family being brutally murdered by these people. That same evening, the negroes returned to their old dwellings, intended for slaves, and began to live there as they had before the abolition of slavery.
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