When Lars von Trier unleashed Dogville back in 2004 it created a storm. Was it a primarily political or religious? Did it endorse US intervention abroad or suggest that small town America deserved to be destroyed? Was it commending a God of judgement, or deriding the very idea? And why did none of the buildings have any walls?

Two years later and von Trier is back with the second instalment of his USA: Land of Opportunities Trilogy, Manderlay. As Grace and her father move away from the charred remains of Dogville they encounter Manderlay - a cotton plantation where slavery continues to operate 70 years after it ought to have been abolished. Grace decides to flex her newly acquired activism and liberate the slaves and stay around to help them form a new government, until they are ready to govern themselves. Sound like an analogy for modern day Iraq? Perhaps. But as the eighth and final chapter of the story unfolds it becomes clear that it's primarily race relations, rather than (Anglo-)American foreign policy that's under the microscope.  

Von Trier is bold in his examination of such subject matter going in with guns blazing where political correctness fears to tread. His films are open to interpretation and therefore misinterpretation, but it is far from easy to decipher which is which. Does the film represent the sum of von Trier's thoughts about people of colour, or is he merely looking at them through the eyes of those he is decrying?  

Either way he reaches a depressing conclusion. Without realising it Grace is patronising and sanctimonious. Her well-intentioned intervention, driven by her own liberal guilt, is riddled with her own sense of superiority, caustically unveiled by her condescending attitude on the one hand, and her lustful objectivisation of the male ex-slaves on the other.

When the futility if her efforts are finally revealed and we realise that things have come full circle, it is a bleak moment, and a seemingly damming indictment of attempts to undo the sins of the past. Dogville could hardly be called uplifting, but at least it pointed to the possibility of something bigger than itself that could bring a form of justice. Here the higher power has moved on, and the film ends on a despairingly chaotic note.    

What then is von Trier's solution to the legacy of slavery? It seems unlikely that he is arguing that, once imposed, the system should have remained ad infinitum. Yet, unlike Dogville, solutions, however terrible, are not forthcoming. The film stares down the bottomless well of nihilism, seemingly content that saying "this is wrong" is all that can be done because there is no solution; the only thing to be done is to expose it, and show it for what it is.

Sadly, such inactive nihilism is a luxury many of us cannot afford. Whether people of faith, or not, many of us instinctively feel that no matter how unfeasibly deep and dark the well goes, there must be a way out.

It remains to be seen where von Trier will go with Washington, the final part of this trilogy, but, at this point, it seems unlikely he will point to any solutions. That is not his style, and perhaps not his calling.

Meanwhile, those of us of faith will continue to believe in a higher power greater than von Trier's bigoted gangster who drives by after a mere quarter of an hour of waiting, and hope that somehow he has a way to get us out of the mess that destructive, selfish flesh has plunged humanity into.