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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

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; UK critics are listed first)
Bubble View | 1 2 3 4 5 6 >> >|
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Reviews
Tomatometer Critic Review Category
N/R

Philip French

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Jan., 20 2007 08:09 AM

Observer [UK]

tomato

Ryan Gilbey

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

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Sep., 28 2006 03:16 AM

Sight and Sound

splat

Dave Calhoun

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: | comment Comment | Jun., 24 2006 04:29 AM

Time Out

tomato
4/5

David Parkinson

Unstintingly raw and cynical.

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Apr., 01 2006 04:30 AM

Empire Magazine

tomato
4/5

Joe Utichi

Not necessarily as pertinent as it attempts to be.

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Mar., 11 2006 03:28 AM

FilmFocus

N/R

Peter Bradshaw

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Mar., 04 2006 03:28 AM

Guardian [UK]

splat
3/5

Matthew Leyland

There's a troubling sense that von Trier is simply going through the motions.

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Feb., 21 2006 03:15 AM

BBC

tomato
4/5

Matthew Turner

Manderlay isn't as powerful or as intense as Dogville, but it is still an intriguing and entertaining film, thanks to Bryce Dallas Howard's performance and John Hurt's hugely enjoyable narration.

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Oct., 29 2005 03:25 AM

ViewLondon

tomato
5/5

Rich Cline

A slow-burning, deeply disturbing fable that needs to be seen and discussed

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Oct., 27 2005 03:15 AM

Shadows on the Wall

N/R

Felix Vasquez Jr.

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Apr., 29 2009 03:16 AM

Cinema Crazed

N/R

Peter Keough

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Apr., 23 2009 03:16 AM

Boston Phoenix

tomato
A-

Cole Smithey

"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: | comment Comment | Apr., 15 2009 01:52 PM

ColeSmithey.com

tomato
4/5

Robert Davis

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: | comment Comment | Jun., 03 2008 09:38 AM

Paste Magazine

tomato
4/5

Rob Gonsalves

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: | comment Comment | Sep., 27 2007 05:39 PM

eFilmCritic.com

splat
C

Jeffrey Overstreet

[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: | comment Comment | Sep., 12 2007 02:37 PM

Looking Closer

tomato
4/5

Anton Bitel

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

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Aug., 02 2007 06:55 AM

Eye for Film

tomato
B

Rob Humanick

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

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Jul., 03 2007 04:16 AM

Projection Booth

tomato
4/4

Kam Williams

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: | comment Comment | May., 20 2007 08:20 PM

DallasBlack.com

splat

Maria Garcia

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

Full Review Source: | comment Comment | Mar., 01 2007 03:55 AM

Film Journal International

splat
B-

Scott Tobias

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: | comment Comment | Nov., 27 2006 03:38 PM

AV Club

 
 
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