Dogville (2003)(CZ)

The time: the Great Depression. The place: the town of Dogville, nestled in the American Rockies. Dogville is both literally and figuratively the end of the road, in the literal sense being that there is only one road in and out of town, the physical end of the road on the other side of town being an abandoned silver mine. One evening, resident Tom Edison Jr., an aspiring writer who has yet to write more than a few words, and in that vein a budding philosopher, meets a scared, well dressed, beautiful young woman, Grace, who he learns is evading some gangsters who want to kill her. In speaking with the other fourteen adult residents of the town, they a generally unaccepting lot, Tom, believing he a good observer of the human spirit as a writer and philosopher, wants them collectively to harbor Grace from the gangsters. If being truthful to himself, Tom would admit that he has ulterior motives in his attraction to her. In not wanting to place their lives in danger, Grace does not divulge to any of them the nature of her relationship with the gangsters. Besides being collectively unaccepting, each individual resident has a problem in his or her life, each one different from the others. Against their initial hesitation, they decide to allow Grace to stay for a two week trial period to gauge for themselves Grace's character. During that time on Tom's advice to her, Grace will do whatever task the residents ask of her to win them over. Although that measure does not yield the results either Tom or Grace was expecting, Grace, by being open and true to herself, is able to win them over. The more and more that Grace becomes a benefit to the town as a collective, the more certain individuals want to take advantage of her good nature for their own personal benefit, so much so that life in Dogville, which for Grace started out as being a Utopia, may become her prison, much like it has been for the existing residents, but for Grace a different type of prison that she experienced with the gangster.