An old chestnut—no less true for being old, nor a chestnut—has it that an effective political cinema cannot merely represent radical political movements, issues, or events, but must render them through forms that are themselves radically political.

Recently watching the mindless masterpiece Speed—in which, famously, a bus must stay above 55 miles an hour or else get blown up by a deranged Dennis Hopper—I became fascinated with how its creators perfectly situated the action in Los Angeles, with its labyrinthine freeways floating almost detached from the city center.

Existing in that obscure space between the didactic, leftist cinema of Godard and the time-based cinema of Warhol, and often lost among better-known legends of the avant-garde stands Yvonne Rainer.

As usual for a Lars von Trier film, Dogville’s release has met with both denunciations and panegyric.