Blind woman allows herself and her 10-year-old son to suffer unnecessarily because she is too "noble" to ask for any help -- or accept it when it is offered. She is so "noble" that when she fantasizes the fantasies are as harsh and bleak as her everyday life. This broad has no imagination, not to mention common sense. (I'll skip the part about her role as Maria in the "Sound of Music" because it's just too ridiculous to go into.) She refuses a ride home and almost gets hit by a truck. She is warned not to daydream at her drudge of a factory job because she could ruin expensive machinery if she doesn't pay attention, so she daydreams and ruins the machine, thereby cutting off her only supply of money, which she was socking away to pay for an eye operation for her son, who will go blind if he doesn't get one before age 11 or so. Let's see, oh yeah, the friend she rents a trailer from (he's a cop!) spies on her to see where she hides the money and steals it because he can't bear to tell his wife to stop spending money because if he does she might leave him (what she spends the money on remains a mystery because they also live in a hovel.) But this supposedly makes him suicidal but can't kill himself so he begs our girl to when she comes after her hard-earned money. In a really contrived and artificial scene, she winds up shooting him and then bashing in his head for good measure --is arrested, convicted and hanged. As Porky used to say...that's all folks.
Review of Dancer in the Dark
Dancer in the Dark
(2000)
SPOILER. (This one was "spoiled" before I ever got to it.
8 November 2000
Warning: Spoilers