'MANDERLAY' FALLS SHORT IN EXAMINATION OF RACISM.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

SO WRONG in so many ways, Lars von Trier's latest look at what's bad about America, ``Manderlay,'' is tough sledding even for that minority of us who found a good deal of merit in his last screed, ``Dogville.''

More or less a sequel to that minimalist, stagebound effort, ``Manderlay'' applies the same formal approach - single location, few props, buildings defined by chalk marks on the ground - and withering view of human nature to the American South's legacy of slavery. Two key ``Dogville'' characters, idealistic mobster's daughter Grace and her cynical, pragmatic father, also survive the transition. Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle came back for more, too.

But Grace and her pop are played by new actors, Bryce Dallas Howard and Willem Dafoe, who both prove to be shadows of their predecessors Nicole Kidman and James Caan. And for some reason, the exquisite lighting strategies that Dod Mantle used to turn ``Dogville'' into a richly textured artistic experience is substituted here with a murky kind of eternal night. It calls distracting attention to the austere set design, rather than vivifying it into a singular vision as before.

But these aesthetic issues are nothing compared to the astoundingly misjudged themes von Trier works out over two-plus wearying hours. The Danish provocateur wheels out every awful stereotype about African-Americans someone who's never been here could imagine. Some are exploded but many, unfortunately, just get reinforced. Whites don't fare any better, but that doesn't make the cliches any more palatable.

Then there are von Trier's more incendiary ideas, such as the endurance of a slavelike mind set among the technically free, that call our most cherished beliefs into question. This is definitely bold, and maybe even necessary; maddeningly, though, von Trier can't dramatize it in anything other than the most misanthropic manner.

It's 1933, and Grace, Dad and his goons are on the run after the Dogville slaughter. They stop by Alabama plantation Manderlay, where they discover the black workers are still treated like chattel 70 years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Having recently escaped her own indenture, Grace self-righteously decides to impose freedom. Though Dad advises against it, he does leave her and some gunsel muscle at Manderlay to work out some white guilt.

Grace quickly turns the place's overseers into servants and tries to organize the African-Americans into a going agricultural concern. They prove not particularly organizable, and to get things done, advance democracy and keep the peace, Grace turns into a very reluctant tyrant - but a dictator who betrays her deepest ideals nonetheless.

Nothing is really as it seems, however. Grace finds herself deceived by Wilhelm (Danny Glover), the nominal black leader, and seduced by trickster Timothy (Isaach De Bankole). If you've ever dreamed of seeing Opie's daughter stripped, defiled and degraded, here's your chance. More upsetting, though, is the way von Trier allows this usually talented actress (whatever you thought of ``The Village,'' Howard was marvelous in it) to come off as stiff and disoriented as she does through the first half of ``Manderlay.''

Perhaps the most annoying thing about the movie, though, is that von Trier's occasional flashes of real insight - into the persistence of oppression, the weaknesses of liberalism and the evangelical approach to democracy that isn't working any better in Iraq than it does at Manderlay - cannot be shrugged, laughed nor sneered off. The people in this movie may not act like any American of any race ever did, but they sure represent cultural failures we're all too familiar with.

Thanks, Lars, for a bad movie we can't just totally dismiss.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

MANDERLAY - Two stars

(Not rated: racism, sex, nudity, violence, language, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach De Bankole, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, Lauren Bacall.

Director: Lars von Trier.

Running time: 2 hr. 13 min.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.; University Town 6, Irvine.

In a nutshell: Another punishing von Trier endurance test, this one examining racism in America. Some provocative ideas mixed in among the monotony, but since the Danish director has never been to this country, his thesis ends up being racist as well as clueless.