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Okay—here is where that revelatory moment is played out. When one of these violations of Grace's dignity occurs, the camera pulls back to the edge of town … and we can still see the crime taking place in the distance.

That is because Dogville takes place on a stage without walls. It's basically a play on a minimalist set.

The film opens with a "God's-eye view" (quite literally) of the town, complete with chalk outlines of homes, the shop, gardens, even the doghouse. When we see things from a human being's point of view, at eye-level, we can stare past the townsfolk as they putter about in their enclosed worlds. With this one shot, one of many perfectly captured by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, von Trier captures a powerful truth: We are closer to each other than we think we are. The barriers that divide us are porous, insubstantial and misleading. None of our sins are private. One person's selfishness influences everything and everybody. The audience can see that, even if these characters can't.

The graphic nature of this portrayal of cruelty will come as no surprise to viewers familiar with von Trier's extreme tactics. The Danish director is preoccupied with stories of heroines whose kindness singles them out as a target for human evil. Once her tormentors are made aware of their sins, they would rather destroy the one who shows it to them than repent or seek healing. Only von Trier could (or would) transform Lauren Bacall from a small town shopkeeper to someone resembling Hannibal Lecter in just a few hours.

Hopefully, viewers will get past the shock to realize what von Trier is revealing. He is not merely a sensationalist, but his audacity tends to draw more attention than his storytelling. Dogville throws a lot of fuel on that fire.

Von Trier's contempt for America is painfully clear here, even distracting. The film's biggest flaw is the way it makes such a pointed and specific attack, an approach that lessens the story's universality. Von Trier's never been to America, but in Dancer in the Dark and Dogville he pictures it as a place almost devoid of mercy, love, or kindness, stained with a history of slavery, greed-driven capitalism, and luxuries gained through the exploitation of cheap labor.

It is worth asking whether any of his criticisms are deserved. Like it or not, America's contribution to mythology is the story of the lone cowboy in the Old West who brings about justice his own way, with guns a-blazin'. In Dogville, von Trier brings the dynamic of vigilante justice back to America to unleash judgment of his own. In a sense, he's saying, "How dare you call yourself a 'Christian nation' when you behave grace-lessly to the poor at home and abroad, and when you act in the arrogance of judgment elsewhere?" If this voice of conscience is "anti-American," then so are many of our foremost artists, including the aforementioned Hawthorne and O'Connor—and Bob Dylan too.

To be fair, there is a possibility von Trier is including himself in the guilt of arrogance. Tom's moralizing and self-righteousness could be a stand-in for the pious filmmaker. Tom's the manipulative artist who "tunneled through … the human soul, deep into where it glittered." (These souls do glitter, but more like hell's embers than gold.) "I love you," Grace tells him, "because you don't demand anything of me." But upon gaining her confidence, we're told Tom feels "a fine sensation of mastery … new for him in terms of the opposite sex." He, like everyone else, is assigned blame for the persecution of Grace.

Paul Bettany and Nicole Kidman

But anyone arguing that von Trier is merely representing human failings will have a hard time ignoring the parting shot of the end-credits sequence, which shows pictures of Americans suffering and causing others to suffer to the tune of David Bowie's "Young Americans."

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