Reusing the same actor (Bill Hensen)
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Manderlay
vilkit — 11 years ago(July 28, 2014 06:44 AM)
I can deal with cast changes, in fact I think it's cool to have rotating actors play Grace & her father. but recycling the same actors for other roles strikes me as odd & jarring. Bill Hensen died so it's odd that his actor would reappear here as another character entirely.
In sum.. Yes I can accept that new actors have taken on Grace/Father's role but It's a little weird to have the same actors play multiple roles -
MelancholyPonyAndTheCircusBoy — 10 years ago(July 30, 2015 09:57 AM)
I think reusing the actors reinforces the falsity of film (Servigny and Bacall's characters in Dogville also died).
Just like how the buildings are lines painted on the ground and Grace and her father are played by different actors in both films.
Also there are several very jarring edits throughout Dogville and Manderlay, just to wake you up if you get too cosy with even the stark, warehouse format.
I think often people are willing to sacrifice story and meaning for the illusion of reality of films - I guess this is not what LvT is about, which is great but I find most of his films difficult to watch (probably intentional). But there are not really any audiovisual distractions here and it makes you focus so much more on words and the interaction of the characters. I'v never seen such a complicated and confusing representation of group power dynamics as in Dogville and Manderlay.
Done with fish.