Dancer in the Dark

If it were just straight melodrama, director Lars von Trier’s story/musical would be nothing more than a relentlessly depressing account of a self-sacrificing single mother (Icelandic pop star Bjork), a nearly blind working woman and immigrant whose fervent battle to save money needed for her young son’s operation carries her, unjustly but inevitably, to being convicted of murder. But this woman also immerses herself in the ecstasies of the production numbers in old movie musicals, and that is both her curse and a saving grace.