Lars von Trier is an excellent director of shocking and innovative material (Breaking the Waves, for instance), and here he combines that ability with an old-fashioned musical subplot. You'll either find it riveting or irritating, depending on your feelings about pop singer Björk, who wavers between raw and amateurish as a Czech immigrant in 1960s small-town America. Suffering from an inherited condition of encroaching blindness, she works relentlessly to earn the money for an operation that will save her ten-year-old son from the same fate. But when her landlord (David Morse) divulges his own financial worries, the stage is set for harrowing tragedy. To her credit, the elfin Björk is every inch the victim, but von Trier's unremittingly fatalistic narrative doesn't make this easy viewing. It will divide critics and viewers forever.

A Czech immigrant in 1960s America escapes into musicals while working long hours in poverty. Struggling with hereditary blindness, she is determined to secure her son’s future and will sacrifice everything to ensure he receives the operation that could spare him from her fate.