At first, all is well, and Kidman is beloved. Eventually, though, she is exploited, raped, confined, threatened, verbally abused, and her property is destroyed. All the while, the demure Kidman protests only mildly, and never gives up hope that things may get better tomorrow.
The villagers are many and of nearly equal importance aside from Paul Bettany, a philosopher and would-be writer and public speaker. Paul is kind and attempts to help or rescue Kidman, but his efforts backfire. In the end, he betrays her trust as much as any of the others.
They include Bettany's elderly and hypochondriac pensioner father, Philip Baker Hall; Bettany's disaffected would-be girlfriend, Chloë Sevigny; Sevigny's none-too-bright engineer brother, Jeremy Davies; storekeeper Lauren Bacall; truck driver Zeljko Ivanek, peach grower Stellan Skarsgård; his humorless wife Patricia Clarkson; her bratty children, especially Jason (Miles Purinton); church keeper Siobhan Fallon; black matron Cleo King and her severely handicapped relation Shauna Slim; and prattling blind man Ben Gazzara.
John Hurt is the crisp, detached narrator. James Caan appears at film's end as the crime lord in search of Kidman, who turns out to be a worried father instead of a jealous lover. Caan and Kidman discuss the fate of Dogville, which results in the massacre of all residents except Moses the dog.
How others will see it. Despite a stellar supporting cast, this nervy film was too disturbing for the Oscars, Golden Globes, or BAFTA. The movie did best at the European Film Awards, where it won Best Director and Best Cinematography (Anthony Dod Mantle). The box office was unimpressive, but video sales and rentals for Dogville are presumably strong, given the high number (60K) of user ratings at imdb.com.
No doubt many find the film mesmerizing, given its extremely high user rating of 8.0. However, the ratings do decline with increasing age, from 8.8 under 18 to 7.1 over 45. Further, women over 45 only give it a 6.5. 30% of the latter demographic assigns it the lowest possible grade of 1, likely none too pleased with the town's treatment of Kidman and the price they eventually pay for it.
How I felt about it. Clearly, the movie is an allegory of some kind. I interpret it as answering the age-old question, is humanity inherently good, or inherently evil? We already know that the correct answer is "both." However, the film takes a different tack, and concludes that we, collectively, are calculating and hateful opportunists. Kidman is blackmailed by the entire town, and once that has run its course, they turn her in anyway, in expectation of a reward.
The key Dogville resident is Bettany. He appears to recognize, better than the rest, that the town's moral compass is lacking. For him, Kidman is not only a beautiful and defenseless woman, but an ideal subject to develop the town's sympathy. His plan actually works for awhile, but the dark side of man eventually surfaces, and Bettany is too much of a coward to effectively confront it.
Because it is a movie, there is no limit to the amount of abuse that Kidman will absorb without resorting to anger or depression. She is not a religious person, but she must value her soul anyway, since she would rather be the one taking it than dishing it. That makes the ending all the more ridiculous, especially Bettany's clueless loitering and observations before Kidman shoots him.