Most cineastes agree: Lars von Trier is the most exciting thing happening in film today. Movie-going during von Trier's still fresh career is like what I can only imagine tuned-in fans felt during the early sixties, feasting on new releases from Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, or perhaps the seventies, with releases by Scorsese and Altman. Lars von Trier's work is completely new, artistically and sensationally innovative in a medium so many said was dead.

That said, please don't think I'm a devoted fan.

Unless you've been living under a rock—by which I mean mainstream America—you already know that von Trier is the premier author of the Danish Dogme 95 manifesto and director of such genre-breaking curiosities as Zentropa, The Kingdom, and Breaking The Waves. The last film was a major success among art house crowds and landed its star Emily Watson an Academy Award nomination. The same will no doubt happen for Bjork for the starring role in his newest film Dancer In The Dark. I say this with such assuredness because they're always reaching to weird places for actress noms, and, basically, Bjork's performance is the same exact one as Watson's. Except this time she sings. And who doesn't like singing?

Unless you've been living under a rock—by which I mean mainstream America—you already know that Bjork is the rag doll-ish Icelandic chanteuse who began her career as the leader of the pop-rock group the Sugarcubes. Since that band's demise in the mid-90s, Bjork has been creating psychedelic dance music, lending her enormous vocal chops and, um, curious looks to cutting-edge rave DJs. The result is music true enough to be labeled alternative, and impossible to not recognize as special.

In Dancer in the Dark Bjork plays Selma, another of von Trier's martyred women. This time, she's a big hearted, mostly-quirky Czech immigrant working her fingers to the bone to afford special surgery for her son. The specifics are both implausible and superfluous. All you need to know is that she has devoted her whole life to correcting her life's one big mistake. And she loves Hollywood Musicals. (Loves them so much that she always leaves the theater after the next-to-last song, so the story never has to end. See? Quirky!)

This is character study of both saint (we first Selma her fumbling though Maria's parts in The Sound of Music) and damsel. Her support system consists of factory den mother Catherine Deneuve and a local dim trucker played by Peter Stormare. With her greasy hair and coke-bottle glasses (did I mention she's almost blind?), Selma slouches toward her own ill fate with a cherubic smile and cute-as-a-button accent.

Much like Breaking The Waves, Selma convinces herself that she's guilty of horrible sin, and uses fantasy to save herself. Selma's hubris, she believes, was selfishly getting pregnant so she'd "have a little baby to hold." Much like Emily Watson's character in Breaking the Waves who so missed her husband she'd wish for anything to send him home, Selma believes that her boy's inheritance of eye disease must be paid for with her own suffering.

And suffer she does. Robby Muller's cinematography, striking and grey, shows her making widgets in the factory, and up all hours assorting tiny pins for extra income. She also must deny her beloved son simple gifts, all the more hurtful as she cannot tell him yet about his upcoming vision troubles. Her only escape is to transform the noise of her surroundings into music—specifically Hollywood Musical music—and to daydream her drudgery away.

Much like Jonathan Pryce's character in Brazil, fantasy keeps Selma alive. It also keeps Dancer in the Dark alive. While the performances by Bjork and Deneuve are marvelous, as is the edgy kinda-sorta-documentary look of the picture, I think I've made it pretty clear that this is Breaking the Waves redux. Almost.

The musical numbers––yes, numbers--are a revelation. Those that remember Bjork's Spike Jonze directed video for "It's Oh So Quiet" shouldn't be surprised that Bjork can ham-it-up Broadway-style. But the music is hardly Cole Porter. The numbers evolve from mundane rhythms scratched out by machines. The melodies are a little formless. And the dances and, yes, goofy staging, are nothing less than heartbreaking given the circumstances.

These musical breaks are shrouded in so many layers of irony that it may take half the staff of Brown University to dig down to their true meaning.

The movie's one of those delightful downers. And I give further props for showcasing the cruelty of capital punishment—even if it doesn't really happen like that. I recommend a new Lars von Trier film like I'd've recommended a new showing by Picasso or symphony by Stravinsky. When it's all said and done, he will be remembered as an equal.