Dogma: Fad or Trendsetter?
Francis Rex Alger
Daily Tribune, July 16, 2002

One of the features in Art Film Theater in Greenbelt 1 this month is “The King is Alive”. Ordinary viewers' first impression is it's not a product of Hollywood big studios that are shown in most of the local theaters but film buffs won't certainly miss it because it's the fourth picture produced under the Danish Dogma 95 pact. My images about Denmark are the statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen and the popular, kids' toy blocks called Lego while in the realm of motion pictures, the most memorable Danish pictures are the ones that won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar: “Babette's Feast” and “Pelle the Conqueror”. However, the last few years saw the birth and formative period of the Dogma cinema that caught many people's attention.

Four Danish filmmakers - namely Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Soren Kragh-Jacobsen and Kristian Levring - sign the Dogma '95 manifesto where their aim is to make films completely devoid of artifice, whether that be make-up, props, music or any degree of technical manipulation. The result is cinema in the raw, stories empowered by a rare spontaneity and naturalism.

Prior to the signing, von Trier has done a couple of projects that show what Dogma would be all about. “The Kingdom”, a TV miniseries where the first part is shown in 1994 and the second one three years later, is a “E.R.”-inspired hospital drama that features doctors, nurses and patients who are both eerie and eccentric as David Lynch's characters in “Twin Peaks”. However, it's the “science versus superstition” angle that keeps the viewers glued to their seats and the suspense that stems from it is made possible through a close-up of the various members of the cast, the grainy texture of most scenes and water-colored hues that von Trier effectively used to distinguish the distinctive mood of every part of the hospital.