There was scattered applause at the end of my screening of Manderlay, so a few people obviously found it edifying. At the time I was somewhat bewildered. What had we just seen?

The second installment in Lars von Trier’s America trilogy takes up the story where Dogville left off. Grace (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard after Nicole Kidman quit the production), her father, and his band of gangsters, stop at a farm called Manderlay where slavery is still practiced despite it being 70 years since its abolition. Grace uses her father’s power to force freedom upon the slaves and teach the slave owners a lesson. You can probably see where this is going.

The process appears to work, despite some setbacks caused by Grace’s naivety, but the situation is artificial. It is only Grace and her henchman that are keeping the society in check and once she hands power back, inevitably, the society falters as the crude democracy Grace foists on the ex-slaves descends into violence and mob-mentality justice.

As a film, it works better than Dogville. The sets have grown into a slight semblance of three-dimensionality and the script is less harrowing, cleverer, funnier. While Kidman is clearly a better actress than the new-comer, I was glad she was not involved. Grace requires a much younger, less-sure actress and Kidman would have brought too much baggage to the part.

As social comment, Manderlay could be read in a few ways. Aside from its obvious African-American theme it has resonances with the Iraq war and the policy of exported (militant) democracy. Manderlay is decidedly anti-American and, by dint of this, it ends peculiarly as a kind of endorsement of slavery. The situation is hopeless – the oppressor must oppress because it is demanded of her by the oppressed. Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk often posits the Iraqi dilemma as one of the choice between the certitude and relative safety of despotism and the anarchy of freedom. Von Trier opts for the former, certainly the more shocking and interesting angle to take, but he ignores the successes of democracy. Has not virtually every successful free country emerged from some sort of autocratic rule? Was this not a trying time for all those freed? And have those countries not succeeded better in the long run because of their freedom?

This film deserves to be seen. It is the best and most interesting race-film of recent times, a stimulating meditation in opposition to the Oscar-winning comic-book that was Crash. Miss it at your peril.—Ian Christopher