Rejecting Grace

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What is the biggest problem facing the world today? Many would say it is the issue of climate change and global warming; others might argue that our biggest problem is the global economy, or any number of other things that are often in the newspaper headlines. The answer Dogville gives to this question is quite different to any of these things. Before we go on to look at what the film has to say about this, it is worth noting the unusual format of the film, and the effect this produces.

The first few seconds of Dogville make it clearthat itis no ordinary film. We are informed by an on-screen caption that the full title is: The Film 'Dogville' as Told in Nine Chapters and a Prologue. The chapter titles appear throughout the film, guiding our way through the winding plot. Everything is filmed on a completely black sound stage, with only white lines on the floor to show where houses and other buildings are. The effect this creates is unsettling. There are no walls; when the camera points across the town of Dogville you can see into every house. The viewer is given the feeling that in this town there are no secrets and nothing is hidden. Our only information about the physical appearance of the town comes from an all-knowing narrator (John Hurt), who tells us that the unseen buildings are ‘pretty wretched, more like shacks really’. The narrator also serves to explain the thoughts and feelings of the townspeople as the story unfolds. Together, these features create a viewing experience that is surreal, at times almost dreamlike. It is clear that Dogville is deeply symbolic: a repeated idea in the film is that things are best taught ‘by illustration’, and this is perhaps part of what Dogville is attempting to do. As we look closely at the film, we will see that almost every word spoken is dripping with significance that rises above what it at first seems to mean.

Dogville tells the story of a small American town that has seen better days, now suffering in the Great Depression that began in 1929. The people live an isolated existence, miles away from the nearest city. Their only contact with the outside world is a single telephone and the news brought by Ben (Zeljko Ivanek), who delivers goods to the city in his truck. The town’s self-appointed moral conscience is Tom (Paul Bettany) who sees himself as a great thinker. He takes it upon himself to give lectures for the purpose of Dogville’s ‘moral rearmament’.

The simple existence of this small town is soon upset when Grace (Nicole Kidman), a young woman on the run from gangsters, arrives in the town. Tom meets her after hearing gunshots in the distance and, when she explains her plight, he invites her to stay in Dogville. It is at this point we learn Tom’s answer to the question of what humanity’s biggest problem is: ‘the human problem [is to] receive’. Tom comments that, ‘if the people of Dogville have a problem with acceptance, what they really need is something to accept, something tangible like a gift.’ He is struck by the thought that Grace has ‘elected to give herself up to him at random - as a gift.’ He realises that her arrival is the perfect opportunity for the people of Dogville to learn how to receive a gift. The townspeople are at first reluctant to accept her, as Tom expected them to be. Eventually he convinces them to give her two weeks to prove herself, before they decide if she can stay in Dogville. To win them over, Tom devises a scheme: Grace will work one hour a day for each of the residents. However, this plan turns out to be harder to implement than it would seem; the townspeople reject all offers of help with their work. Grace explains to Tom that, ‘they all think someone else needs something and not themselves.’ Taking a different approach, Grace begins to do things that people ‘would like done, but don’t think [are] necessary’. Among other things, she spends time talking to the lonely Mr McKay, who is blind and housebound but too ashamed to admit his problem, and she nurtures the wild gooseberry bushes near the neatly cultivated ones. She soon finds out that there are ‘not so few things that the folk didn’t need doing’.

When the two weeks are over, the town unanimously agrees that she can stay and she is granted a wage from the people for continuing to work as she had been. Unfortunately, this harmony is all too short-lived. Soon, a policeman arrives in Dogville to put up a missing-person poster bearing Grace’s photo, and the people begin to worry about the gangsters again. Their attitude towards Grace undergoes a subtle change, and they begin to demand more from her. The situation is made worse when the policeman returns a few days later to replace the ‘missing’ poster with a ‘wanted’ poster: Grace has been accused of several bank robberies in the past few weeks. Despite her obvious innocence, the townspeople are frightened. To make up for the danger they see themselves in, they demand that Grace makes two visits to each house every day instead of one, and reduce her pay. As they begin to think of her as an outlaw, their attitude towards her grows increasingly condescending and cruel. This downward spiral continues to the point where one of the local men rapes her as the police search the town.

After this, Grace decides to leave Dogville. Tom devises a plot for her to be taken out of town hidden in Ben’s truck. They safely leave the town, but on the way they come across a police checkpoint and Ben climbs into the back with her, telling her that ‘a dangerous load’ costs more to transport. Grace protests that she doesn’t have any money, but as he climbs on top of her she realises his intention. As Ben rapes her, he keeps telling her, ‘it’s nothing personal, I just have to take due payment. I don’t have a choice.’ Grace can do nothing but stay focused on the fact she will soon be free, and as Ben starts the truck again she falls into a deep sleep. She wakes to discover that Ben has returned her to Dogville. The townspeople are outraged by her attempt to leave; they chain a huge, heavy wheel to her and attach a bell to a metal collar round her neck. Despite this, she is told: ‘Don’t think of this as a punishment.’ Her situation becomes worse than ever; the narrator coldly informs us that ‘most townspeople of the male sex now visited Grace by night to fulfil their sexual needs.’

There are lots of suggestions of what humanity’s biggest problem is. Whatever the issue is, we always think of it as something detached and outside of ourselves. This is true of war, climate change, economic troubles, world poverty and similar issues. We admit that humans can cause these things, but always think they can be fixed by a change of attitude, a new political leader, new laws, protest marches, or any number of other things. Dogville suggests that the problem is deeper still; humanity’s problem is not just a political or social issue, things which are caused by human actions. The message of Dogville is that there is some problem in us. Tom suggests that the ‘human problem is to receive’. The events of the film show that this problem is not simply that ‘gifts’ are refused instead of received, but that things that are freely offered are taken and then abused. Even Tom, who says he loves Grace and whom she sees as a protector, is guilty of this. His apparently selfless act of inviting her to stay in the town is at heart a selfish one: he wants to use her as an illustration to improve the morality of Dogville. His meddling draws Grace deeper into the life of the town and this is what traps her. Tom’s mistake was thinking that he could fix the problem of acceptance by providing an opportunity to accept someone. Instead, he only succeeds in proving his point, and is left like a ‘spider when it has been caught in its own web by the wind’.

Tom calls a town meeting to give Grace a chance to explain to the residents what they are really like. After they have listened in silence as she tells of her sufferings in a way that is ‘not embellished or understated’, there is a pause, and heavy silence falls on the gathering. Then an outcry begins against her ‘copious lies’. The townspeople are outraged at her ‘lies and accusations’ and utterly deny everything she has suggested, despite the fact that it is all true. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Grace found that, ‘appealing to consciences stowed farther and farther away by their owners every day . . . had proved quite a task.’ In the aftermath of Grace’s revelations, she is alone with Tom. He wants to have sex with her, but she says ‘it would be so easy to make love right now, but so completely wrong.’ He is offended by this challenge to his moral sense, but Grace assures him, ‘I’m just asking if you’re afraid you could be so human.’ He leaves in a bad mood with one thought on his mind: ‘moral issues were his home-ground. To think that he might doubt his purity was really to think very little of him.’ Just as the other townspeople were deaf to the truth about themselves, so is Tom.

There are many parallels between the view of humanity given in Dogville and that which we find in the Bible. They agree that the world’s biggest problem is that there is something wrong with human nature. However, the diagnosis of the Bible goes beyond Dogville’s problem of acceptance; this is merely a symptom of an even more serious issue. Jesus came to Earth to give himself to us as a gift: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life’ (John 3:16). However, just as the people of Dogville rejected Grace because she told them the truth about themselves, we are told that Jesus was rejected because he showed people what they were really like: ‘Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed,’ (John 3:19-20, TNIV).

So humans have a problem with acceptance, but the root of this is the fact we have rejected God, and the gift that he offers us. A newspaper once asked its readers to write in answers to the question ‘What’s wrong with the world?’ The Christian writer G.K. Chesterton’s response was simply this: ‘Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G.K. Chesterton.’ This abrupt letter shows that Chesterton understood what the Bible is telling us: we do not simply have a problem, we are the problem. This is fairly depressing news, but Jesus offers us a solution - one that is hinted at in Dogville too. The answer is grace: this is at the very centre of the Bible’s teaching. It is the idea that, despite the fact we are rebels against God, corrupt and self-seeking, and we actually deserve punishment, God wants to save us. Grace is the undeserved favour from God towards humans. How do we get this? The answer is ‘by grace as a gift, through . . . Jesus’ (Romans 3:24, ESV). The people of Dogville rejected their gift of Grace, the young woman on the run, and they meet a tragic end. The question Jesus leaves us with is: will we accept the gift of grace that God offers to us or will we reject it?

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