DOGVILLE DIALOGLISTE
Final scene
GRACE
Final scene
GRACE
So what is it? What is it, the thing…the thing that you don't like about me?
THE BIG MAN
It was a word you used that provoked me. You called me arrogant.
GRACE
To plunder, as it were, a God given right. I'd call that arrogant, daddy.
THE BIG MAN
But that is exactly what I don't like about you. It is you that is arrogant!
GRACE
That's what you came here say? I'm not the one passing judgement, Daddy. You are.
THE BIG MAN
You do not pass judgement, because you sympathize with them. A deprived childhood and a homicide really isn't necessarily a homicide, right? The only thing you can blame is circumstances. Rapists and murderers may be the victims, according to you. But I, I call them dogs, and if they're lapping up their own vomit the only way to stop them is with the lash.
GRACE
But dogs only obey their own nature. So why shouldn't we forgive them?
THE BIG MAN
Dogs can be taught many useful things, but not if we forgive them every time they obey their own nature.
GRACE
So I'm arrogant. I'm arrogant because I forgive people?
THE BIG MAN
My God. Can't you see how condescending you are when you say that? You have this preconceived notion that nobody, listen, that nobody can't possibly attain the same high ethical standards as you, so you exonerate them. I can not think of anything more arrogant than that. You, my child…my dear child you forgive others with excuses that you would never in the world permit for yourself.
GRACE
Why shouldn't I be merciful? Why?
THE BIG MAN
No no no. You should be merciful, when there is time to be merciful. But you must maintain your own standard. You owe them that. You owe them that. The penalty you deserve for your transgressions, they deserve for their transgressions.
GRACE
They are human beings.
THE BIG MAN
No no no. Does every human being need to be accountable for their action. Of course they do. But you don't even give them that chance. And that is extremely arrogant. I love you. I love you. I love you to death. But you are the most arrogant person I've ever met. And you call me arrogant! I have no more to say.
GRACE
You are arrogant. I'm arrogant. You've said it. Now you can leave.
THE BIG MAN
And without my daughter I suppose?
GRACE
Uhm…
THE BIG MAN
I said without my daughter?
GRACE
Hmm, yes!
THE BIG MAN
Well.
GRACE
Yes.
THE BIG MAN
Well, you decide, you decide. Grace, they say you are having some trouble here.
GRACE
No. No more trouble than back home.
THE BIG MAN
I'll give you a little time to think about this. Perhaps you will change your mind.
GRACE
I won't.
THE BIG MAN
Listen, my love…power is not so bad…I am sure that you can find a way to make use of it in your own fashion… Take a walk and think about it.
GRACE
The people who live here are doing their best under very hard circumstances.
THE BIG MAN
If you say so, Grace. But is their best really good enough? Do they love you?
NARRATOR
Grace had already thought for a long time. She had known that if she were not shot when the gangsters arrived she would be faced with her father's suggestion that she return, to become a conspirator with him and his gang of thugs and felons and she did not need any walk to reconsider her response to that, even though the difference between the people she knew back home and the people she'd met in Dogville had proven somewhat slighter than she'd expected.
Grace looked at the gooseberry bushes so fragile in the smooth darkness.
It was good to know that if you did not treat them ill, they would be there come spring as always, and come summer they'd again be bursting with the quite incomprehensible quantity of berries that were so good in pies, specially with cinnamon.
NARRATOR(cont'd)
Grace looked around at the frightened faces behind the windowpanes that were following her every step, and felt ashamed of being part of inflicting that fear. How could she ever hate them for what was at bottom merely their weakness? She would probably have done things like those that had befallen her if she'd lived in one of these houses, to measure them by her own yardstick as her father put it. Would she not, in all honesty, have done the same as Chuck and Vera and Ben and Mrs. Henson and Tom and all these people in their houses?
NARRATOR(cont'd)
Grace paused. And while she did, the clouds scattered and let the moonlight through and Dogville underwent another of those little changes of light. It was if the light, previously so merciful and faint, finally refused to cover up for the town any longer. Suddenly you could no longer imagine a berry that would appear one day on a gooseberry bush, but only see the thorn that was there right now. The light now penetrated every unevenness and flaw in the buildings… and in… the people! And all of a sudden she knew the answer to her question all to well:
If she had acted like them, she could not have defended a single one of her actions and could not have condemned them harshly enough. It was as if her sorrow and pain finally assumed their rightful place.
No, what they had done was not good enough.
And if one had the power to put it to rights, it was one's duty to do so, for the sake of the other towns. For the sake of humanity, and not least, for the sake of the human being that was Grace herself.
epic is epic
SvarSlett