Dogville
2004
Lars von Trier
One of the most freeing aspects to these small-group discussion-type blog posts is that I don't feel any pressure to write a complete essay. My words are just one part of a whole. They are meant to fit together with what anyone else writes. And together, they are designed to elicit discussion. So, without any pressure, I present to you now our thoughts about Dogville. See you in the comments for more.
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Vinny
I'll give this one a 3 out of 5.
Man, this is a tough movie to watch. I really respect its experimental nature, especially the way it mixes stage production with traditional filmmaking. The sparse set was also hugely appealing to me, and felt appropriate given the subject matter.
I also felt like this was a very realistic portrayal of human nature. The selfishness, the greed, the way people manipulate and take advantage of others' weaknesses.
The ending is a little flawed—a bit of a deus ex machina—but I'll excuse it in light of the plot's overall strength.
And, man, I love the performances here. Paul Bettany perfectly embodies a toxic, do-nothing know it all. His treatment of Grace like an object while pretending to be morally superior than his neighbors who are raping her was telegraphed early and well.
Nicole Kidman also delivered as a woman running from a mysterious past and caught between horrible people with no way out. By the end, you can really see how broken she was inside, left without hope.
I have to admit: this is not a movie I'd normally seek out on my own. But I'm glad Film Club gave me an excuse to watch it.
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Brianna
When looking up a description of Lars von Trier's Dogville, you'll find a very apt summary: "a unique yet difficult film to watch."
Its uniqueness, in format most of all, is what had initially drawn my interest in suggesting the film as our team's pick. I've seen plays before, and even plays filmed for the big screen, but this is obviously something different. In this space, all visual cues outside the absolute necessities have been stripped away. What's left are the people of Dogville and the decisions they make.
To me, the bare bones soundstage works for this exact reason. As Tom Edison Jr. puts his town's morality to the test, we bear witness to his findings without any distraction, and the message could not be clearer: evil and cruelty lies in us all. Whether or not you agree with this statement, well, that's up to you.
Hence, the difficulty. You may think the world's an evil place all you want, but it doesn't make it any easier to stomach when evil is thrown in your face.
The scene where Chuck finally gets what he wants, for example, will haunt me for a while. It would've been bad in any scenario, but the way the emptiness of the soundstage highlighted how everyone else was going about their business just feet away—ugh.
More disturbing yet are the actions of the other Dogville residents from there on. Doubling down, joining in, diminishing the humanity of both themselves and Grace in the process. And then, when confronted with the truth, opting to get rid of the object of their sin rather than face the sin itself.
You find yourself rooting for their annihilation, and then, oh shit? Is that guy shooting a baby? I guess everyone is evil, even the gangsters!
Needless to say, this was a complicated watch. Like almost all von Trier's movies, you walk away with a lot to grapple with. Abundant themes of SA I could do without, but all and all, a movie that makes you feel or think is worth it every time.
3.5 out of 5 pukes!
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Catherine
I toyed with the idea of writing a lengthy review of the 2021 documentary Dogsville about trained canines competing in the Agility World Championship and pretending I got my titles mixed up, but I am a serious person who takes her cinephilia seriously, so I checked myself. Plus, after actually watching Lars von Trier's Dogville, I had somehow lost my playful mood.
Maaaaaaaaaan, I have no clue how to begin any sort of assessment or reaction to this film yet. Maybe a few years and a good therapist can help me sort through it. I took mad swings throughout viewing between hating it and loving it, and I think I've (tediously) landed somewhere in between.
After the first half, I was totally locked in. I was initially skeptical of the shaky camera work and the bare-bones sound stage, but I had to admit it worked for me. It was grim and claustrophobic and I was hanging on every word and interaction. When the townspeople slowly began to turn on Grace, I was intrigued, thinking, here we go, now we'll see their true colors. I was a different person during half #1.
If the first half eases you into the discomfort, the second half shoots you out of a cannon straight into a brick wall. The film definitely poses some compelling points about human nature and the merits of mercy and judgment, and by the end you're almost rooting for a father-daughter bonding massacre, but I felt the message of the story was unclear. Is Dogville a microcosm of all of humanity? Are we supposed to assume that all people will act this way when the opportunity presents itself? What IS Dogville? Were these people bred or manipulated to live like this, in which case are they even acting with complete free will? The narrator acknowledges that we won't get all the answers we want, so I guess I'll have to save those for the therapist.
I'll end on a positive note by saying I think Nicole Kidman did a phenomenal job in an exceptionally difficult role that I thought had some fun parallels with Helly R./Helena from Severance.
Anyway, dictum ac factum. Time for my palate cleanser, Dogsville.
3 out of 5 Hummel figurines
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Allison
I was going to joke that in a previous life as a dual Film and English minor, I would have had a lot to say about Lars von Trier's Dogville. But then I somehow wrote over 600 words, so I guess I haven't quite put that life behind me.
I didn't know how to feel about this one until James Caan showed up. That means I sat on my couch for about 150 minutes wondering, "...why?" The scene between Caan and Nicole Kidman's Grace is fascinating. Most of the film takes place in an open, wall-less, bare-bones set, but the cramped scene inside her father's car is deeply intimate. Caan has maybe ten minutes of screen time, but he delivers a captivating performance. On the surface, the dialogue is almost absurd—a father hunting his daughter for over a year just so he can throw back the insult she once hurled at him. Jeez, and I thought I was petty. But, the short (relatively speaking) scene reveals more about Grace than the previous eight chapters combined, and sets the stage (boo) for the melodramatic conclusion.
Leading up to this scene, I found myself thinking, "Oh, is Grace... Jesus?" It feels a little on the nose with the name, but hear me out. She routinely turns the other cheek when the people of Dogville wrong her again and again. The metal wheel she piously drags up and down Elm Street is her cross to bear. In an attempt to liberate herself and offer atonement, she recounts the many sins of the town. However, when faced with their hypocrisy, instead of accepting their failings, they deny her. Her closest ally betrays her, and the town condemns her to a likely death or at least a fate worse than life in Dogville. Through all this, the mistreatment, the assaults, the condemnation, she forgives them.
"But dogs only obey their own nature, so why shouldn't we forgive them?"
This scene is more than a conversation between a father and daughter; this is God and Jesus casting judgment on all of humanity. Forgive them, Daddy, they know not what they do. But, ultimately, there is no redemption in Dogville. Send in the plagues, send in the horsemen, send in the gangsters. The residents got what they wanted after all; the gangsters came and took Grace away, and it only cost them everything.
A few less-formed thoughts:
— The staging was pretentious but effective. Well, at least it was interesting. I've watched enough filmed stage plays not to mind. I imagine Lars von Trier saw a high school production of Our Town once and thought, "Good concept, could be rapier."
— Thomas Edison Jr. reminded me of Arturo Bandini, the protagonist in John Fante's novels about a struggling writer. Bandini is an overly pretentious, deep-thinking, misogynistic horndog born into similar squalor in turn-of-the-century Colorado. Still, he comes off way more likable than Edison, who might be the actual villain of the movie. I don't know what to do with this niche take, but Ask the Dust is one of my favorite books, so maybe you should read it.
— Do the children of Dogville deserve their fate? Maybe the creepy one who desperately wanted a spanking (that's the point Stephan tapped out, bless him), but little baby Achilles? Did we need to see the gangsters shoot a baby? For a movie where everyone mimes door knobs, was it crucial that the gangsters have real guns?
— I'm a fan of any movie that lets the dog live, even one drawn on the floor. That said, morphing Moses (another biblical reference) into a real dog at the very end was corny as hell.
I still don't know if I actually liked it.
3 out of 5 bad apples
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Zach
I watched the movie's first half before the second half, and as I made it through the slow build of the first half, I thought to myself: "This movie feels like a cutesy radio program." I was watching, but I was also doing other things—eating, cleaning up, organizing the house—and I only needed to glance at the screen every once in a while to recenter myself to what was going on. For the most part, though, the audio sufficed. I knew when Tom was talking, when Grace was talking, everyone else just kind of blended together. The set never changes, obviously. I felt like I was stuck in the middle of a big Prairie Home Companion episode.
Ironic, then, that the second half of the movie contained some of the most disturbing visuals I've ever seen in a movie. It's not a secret; anyone who has seen this movie knows what I'm talking about. I consider that an achievement for the film—its ability to turn on a dime and go from a slowly paced, cute story about a strange town protecting a woman to a roaring fire of a movie, where a rape happens nearly every scene and almost every character is eventually murdered violently and their homes burned alive. That's not easy to do. I commend that.
I can't deal with this kind of violence in movies anymore. I wrote about this for YSC for the Sabrina Carpenter song "Taste"—it all feels too close to home these days. This didn't feel like Tarantino-esque violence, either, more of a farce than anything. It felt real. We knew these characters. As much as this movie isn't meant to be entirely realistic—the false entering and exiting through doors, the gooseberry bushes drawn in two dimensions—the terror in the characters' eyes felt real. And I just can't do it.
One thing I found myself thinking about (and I imagine Lars von Trier wants us to wonder about this): For the first 90 percent of the movie, are the citizens of Dogville objectively bad, and is Grace objectively good? Or, if we were Ben or Chuck or Vera, would we be better than them? We all want to say yes. I hope the answer is yes. But we definitely have to question the madness of humanity after watching this. Even Grace, Grace who only cared about the town and its residents, decides to burn it all the ground. Can we blame her? Was it morally just? Was it simply an act of revenge?
Those closing credits were wild. The photos, David Bowie. I don't fully get it. And they added to me saying this sentence to myself once the movie was over: "what the fuck did I just watch?"
But I know what I watched. It was bonkers, yes, but it also fit together. It was a movie I understood throughout, a movie I appreciated for what it was trying to do. I think. I don't know. It swerved this way and that way and I couldn't sleep the night after I watched it, it was that disturbing. All my emotions were activated, and I couldn't process anything.
Writing this is an act of therapy after watching that movie.
At the end of the day, I still believe the love between Tom and Grace was real. I found myself rooting for them as a couple, even as Grace pulled that trigger. Somehow I felt like that her doing that was her final expression of love, even if I can't fully explain how that's the case. I wonder, is Tom a tragic character? None of his plans go well. He philosophizes himself to death, literally. But I can't begin to believe he's evil. In some other alternate version of history, Grace escapes on the apple cart, Tom finds her, and they ride off into the sunset, leaving everyone else in Dogville to... just go on, acting like the small town residents they have always been.
I also couldn't tell if the conversation between Grace and her father was supposed to actually make real sense. Regardless, I did find it hilarious in a dark way that wasn't really that funny at all. A gangster pulling out all the stops to tell his daughter one little thing? That's funny, and yet. The love between him and Grace was just as real as the love between Tom and Grace.
Who here wants to watch Manderlay? I do, I have to say, with an asterisk, as I fear the inevitable violence.
GRADE: 3/5
GRADE: 3/5
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Joe
Sometimes, when I have trouble untying the knots in my head, I gotta lay 'em out on the table here, in words, so that I can more easily untangle, or at the very least take a sharp sword to it and cut it open. I want to figure out what Dogville is trying to tell me. I don't think rehashing the plot is helpful in this sort of blog post, and I've said as much to all of you, but I'm going to do a little bit of that anyway, not for you, but for me.
Grace is faced with a decision when it is revealed that the gangster looking for her is actually her father. Her father tells her to come home, and she declines. They call each other arrogant. He says that she is arrogant specifically because she holds herself to a higher ideal than she does others, and that's because she acts morally superior, which he believes is a synonym for arrogance. Not direct quotes, but Grace says something like "if they are like dogs, then it's just them acting according to their nature," and the dad is like "you can teach a dog to behave, but he won't behave if you forgive him every time he acts according to his nature." Grace has "allowed" (in quotes, because the agency of their actions mostly rests with them, and not her) the townsfolk to degrade and abuse her, and she's very forgiving.
Until... the moonlight hits them, and in that moment she realizes the "truth" (in quotes, because this is the "truth" according to the movie, not necessarily me), that the townsfolk are, yes, obeying their true nature, but that true nature is wicked, and unkind, and deserves punishment. And so Grace sheds her "arrogance" and acts as one might be normally expected to act in a situation such as hers: with vengeance.
It gets more complicated from there for at least three reasons (the third of which will then lead into another, separate section of this write-up). The first is that the final sequence is incredibly violent, way over-the-top. I was not familiar with von Triers as a director before this movie, but I was somewhat familiar with his reputation as being "provocative" beforehand, and for Dogville, the final sequence lends to that reputation. There is no holding back. It escalates to the point where they show a baby (shown on screen for the first time in the whole movie) being murdered point-blank with a gun. Extremely harrowing. I wasn't exactly "triggered" but I understand what the word means when I see imagery like that. And so it's complicated in this way because if we're assuming that the "message" that Lars von Triers is trying to convey here is that "humans are inherently evil," then the imagery undercuts the message. It's evil to keep a woman hostage, it's evil to murder an infant, but none of this is NORMAL. None of this says to me "yup, this is how human beings are!" Dogville goes too far. If that's the message, I don't agree with it, because of how the message is portrayed.
Second, this might not ACTUALLY be the message that the film is attempting to convey. I say this because when we meet Tom Edison Jr.—assumed to be the protagonist at first—we see him forcing neighbors to come to meetings and hear him pontificate on lessons of morality. And it's made pretty clear that the townsfolk either don't take him seriously or resent him for... well, for being "arrogant" (Grace eventually accused him of being arrogant, but I'm extrapolating). So if we're saying that the film presents humanity in a pessimistic light, and if we're saying that the director is presenting this worldview as his worldview, that humanity is inherently evil, then we ALSO must consider the possibility that von Triers is self-deprecating by presenting that view through a stand-in for himself, Tom, who lectures about morality in the same way that Dogville the film might be seen to lecture on morality. And maybe the film presents humanity this way but ALSO wants us to be skeptical of that, just like the townsfolk are of Tom.
Third, there's the rather large issue of Dogville being presented in a purposefully unrealistic fashion. The narrator introduces us to the town in the prologue, and we see that the town as it is presented is actually set on a mostly empty soundstage. By the start of Chapter 1, when you see that, oh shit, the film is still on that soundstage, then the realization hits you—it's gonna be three hours of this. There are no walls, just chalked boundaries. There are no doors, just pretending there are doors plus sound effects added in post. There is nothing beyond the boundary of the stage, except what we need to pretend is there, plus the light that penetrates from that nowhere. Where a film might attempt to use movie magic to convince you that what you are watching is real, Dogville dashes in the other direction—you know this is a movie, there is no pretending, it's all fake.
But through that clear and obvious fiction, we are still told to glance at what is real. The human emotion—it is real, and it exists, even if the walls and the doors and the gunshots and the dog do not. And I... don't know whether this is supposed to serve to underline or undercut the theme. If it's used to bolster the theme, then it bolsters in that human emotions are subjective and that they are a choice and that we can choose to mistrust someone so deeply that we tie a chain around their necks in the same way that we can choose to see Dogville as a real town even though it's shoved in our faces that it's fake. If it's used to push back against the theme, then it pushes back by saying that humans can't possibly be THAT bad because the only time they are that bad is when they are on a fake stage being told to be that bad by a director who is shouting directions off-stage, and ipso facto, in the real world, humans are inherently good.
Of course, it could also be that it neither adds or detracts, but instead just acts as another provocative piece of this puzzle. It's possible that I'll remember Dogville for longer than I might have normally only because of its insane chalk-boundary design, which means that the "what it's trying to say" sticks with you longer too. Even if you don't agree, or don't want to agree, with what it's trying to say.
Wait, what the hell is it trying to say? I started writing assuming that Dogville was trying to say that humans are inherently evil, and I think I might have convinced myself otherwise by writing about it. Which is fine too. It's probably more that I don't want to believe that humans are inherently evil, and I don't think any film, even a really fascinating and thought-provoking and PROVOCATIVE film like this, is going to be able to convince me otherwise. Even when the film argues this exact point! That Grace wanted so hard to believe that humans were inherently good, and look where that got her!
And then I look around and I see something like ICE raids and immigrants being locked away for no reason and etc. etc. etc., ya know, the real-world shit that applies to the allegory of Dogville, and man, it's real fucking hard to stay optimistic about this world and the humans that are living in it. But still, I try. I guess this makes me arrogant.
GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5
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GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 3.33 pukes out of 5
See you all in the comments!
(NEXT TIME: Probably the final instance of blackface earning an Oscar nom in humanity's history, right? It's Tropic Thunder. Unless I'm underestimating how bad is it gonna get before civilization ends?)
19 comments:
I keep wondering whether this would've been a good Zoom discussion, but then I also wonder whether the entire hour would consist of Film Club members shaking their heads slightly and muttering "what the fuck?" Maybe writing down the thoughts are better for this one.
I have a lot more to ask about Dogville, and maybe work will be kind and let me write it all out eventually. Thanks for visiting the comment section! Let's hear what you have to say too.
Allison blowing my mind with the Jesus allegory! Fantastic, makes me (almost) want to rewatch
Primarily, I'm interested in forcing you to make a choice: Do you think Dogville was a good movie? Five out of seven people here chose the "3 out of 5 because I have no idea if I liked it or not" grade, but now imagine that the imaginary door is open and the imaginary gun is placed to your temple, and you are forced to choose. Is this a good movie?
I guess it depends on your definition of "good movie." What movie did I ask this question about before? Was it Mommie Dearest? I forget. But I've often tried to distinguish between "this movie is good because it made me feel good" and "this movie is good because it made me feel." The latter meaning that a movie could make you feel fucking TERRIBLE and still be a good movie because it made you feel that way.
Horrified, sick, disgusted, perplexed, stunned, I felt it all, and none of it particularly good. But I felt it. And I can't stop thinking about this movie after watching it. So no matter what I felt and no matter what the film intended me to feel and no matter whether those feelings are what I wanted to feel or what the filmmaker wanted me to feel.... all of that feelings adds up, to me, as a good movie.
But I really wanna hear other people's thoughts on this! Is there a line that a film could cross, where the "make you feel something" becomes cheap shock? And did Dogville maybe cross that line? Maybe!
Agreed, Catherine. This was one of at least three things that made me go "woah" throughout Allison's thoughts (the second I'll get to at some point later, the third was that Stephan isn't into spanking).
That thought set me off on thinking about Old Testament vs. New Testament, and how it's always been weird to me that the Bible still contains the OT at all, since the god in that one is so much more violent and less forgiving than the NT god. But how maybe Dogville speaks to the reasoning behind its survival, how some people have a different view of humanity, how "punishment" makes more sense to some people than "forgiveness." How, faced with the specific and horrific circumstances that Grace faces in this movie, punishment and vengeance kinda, sorta makes sense. How it makes you wonder whether being Christlike is akin to being ARROGANT.
I don't actually think that, but I think the movie wants you to think that sometimes.
It was a good movie. No question. I didn't feel like the violence was cheap. It was a lot of things, but cheap was not one of them. It was earned. It was still a lot. Killing the baby - I didn't even realize that at the time, but the visual of that might have been too much. I thought of bumping my score to 3.5/5 to reflect that I thought the movie was actually good.
Let's say the movie had graphically shown the rapes, the graphic act of the sex? I remember something like that happening in Requiem for a Dream, although I don't remember that movie that well. That would have crossed the line for me.
One thing I was surprised is that no one talked about the narrator! He's so calm and friendly, and he says the word "gooseberry" in a pretentious way. Maybe he just fades into the background, compared to what the rest of the movie does. I'm not sure.
True! Let's talk about him. You're definitely right in that he was so prevalent at the beginning of the film, but gradually became more and more silent. Why? I am thinking about Dogville now as linear, from Point A (this is clearly a movie, fictional, they didn't even build a set, the dog doesn't exist, etc.!) to Point B (everything is very real, we can finally see the baby, we can finally hear the gunshots, we can finally see the dog. the emotions are real, horrifically so). And maybe part of that linear journey is eschewing the narrator, whose presence definitely alerts the viewer that they are watching a movie, and whose absence aids in helping you gradually forget that this is fictional.
Scrolled through John Hurt's filmography to see where I'd recognize him from. Probably Snowpiercer? Though I don't know if I would've made the connection without Wikipedia, since we don't see him here, and Hurt more or less looks like "generic British actor." Looks like he reappears in at least three more movies on this Film Club list.
Noted, re: Requiem—Zach draws the line at double-ended dildos.
I also muttered "jesus christ" outloud many times while watching, but I dont think that's directly related to my thesis...
Sean G. here: I love Dogville. I first watched it in one sitting on a rainy night last spring and watched it again yesterday. It's bleak, evil, super disturbing, and so darkly funny (John Hurt's, dry observant narration gets me laughing). I feel like more than anything else, Dogville is about the evils of the United States. Capitalism, greed, law enforcement, crime and punishment. How easy it is to be kind when its convenient for us. Bowie's Young Americans playing over the images as the credits roll is brilliant in my opinion. It's funny and shocking and I think it acts fantastic final nail in the coffin to Von Trier's point. Hey, America: you aren't that great, look how you treat each other, this is how we see you. I do tend to see the good in people, it's hard not to agree with Von Trier considering all that's happening here presently.
Big fan of the staging. The negative space really enhances the focus of the actors, especially the extreme closeups. Stunning camerawork. Nicole Kidman is so so so good here. Hits every emotional note with just a subtle movement or shift in her eyes. And the ensemble is stellar. Patricia Clarkson is so devilish and crazy, I love it. And Paul Bettany is great as Tom, the slimy, "intellectual" loser.
A collaborative masterwork from all involved. A crushing, interesting, heart-breaking and dark-as-night funny movie. 5 pukes.
I like the idea of it specifically lamenting America, as opposed to what I was thinking before this, that it was judging humanity in general. Small town USA as a microcosm of the USA at large. And it wasn't specifically mentioned so far, maybe because it's too obvious, but that Grace could be a metaphor for an immigrant, one who is labeled "illegal immigrant" by those Dogville-esque Americans who take advantage and then toss aside.
I also meant to mention the credits, you and Zach both pointing them out. You're probably right, in that Grace is one example of someone who America treats poorly or forgets about, and now here are dozens of other examples.
I agree with this idea, Joe. "ALSO must consider the possibility that von Triers is self-deprecating by presenting that view through a stand-in for himself, Tom, who lectures about morality in the same way that Dogville the film might be seen to lecture on morality. And maybe the film presents humanity this way but ALSO wants us to be skeptical of that, just like the townsfolk are of Tom."
While we can only truly know about an artist's intent from what they say about their own work, I think it's fair to classify Von Trier as an "intellectual" filmmaker who seemingly uses his films to hold a mirror up to society, trying to show us our moral shortcomings...despite him apparently being a pretty monstrous person. Sexual allegations against him, mistreating actors, etc.
I am ashamed to admit that, until I read all of your write-ups, I did not make the connection between Dogville, the dog, and the conversation about the behavior of dogs.
Untuck that tail Joe, you shouldn't feel ashamed. you're a good boy. I didn't make the connection until watching it this second time and after reading these posts. It seems so clear once you do see it, thought.
Been thinking about the bone that was left for the dog that Chuck says still has meat on it. Like, we're tired and poor and hungry -- we deserve that, not the dog. Then Grace takes the bone when she gets into town -- seems to be making her no better than the dog. And that's how she's treated. Makes me think more about your immigrant comment. Also so sad that Tom initially only takes an interest in her realizing he could use her to uplift his own self righteousness and to use her as his illustration to make his point during the town meeting.
I'm glad someone mentioned the allegations against him. I didn't know about this (or really anything about the director) until my post-movie Wiki crawl. I'll be honest, had I known, I probably wouldn't have even included the movie on the list. But I also didn't want my entire reaction to be "I wish I hadn't seen this movie now that I know this," because that would suck the life out of this Film Club exercise. Plus, the movie felt meaningful to me, in the moment.
But if there is a reason I won't be considering or rewatching this movie after we wrap up here, it'll be because I believe his victims. Doesn't make me feel good that the allegations complicate the art, even though the other 99% of the time I'm preaching that complicated art is good art.
I dunno, man... it's complicated and also it's not. I'm down to talk about this some more and also down to bury any thought of this dude by Monday morning.
I don't know why it's taking me so long to work through the moral choices of the characters in this film, but thinking about the dog at the end sets me back.
Because I don't think anyone mentioned that the reason the dog was spared was specifically because Grace wanted to even the scales after she had stolen his bone.
That this goes back to the Old Testament thing of "an eye for an eye," that morality works when it's equal, when good is repaid with good and bad repaid with bad. As opposed to New Testament "turn the other cheek" shit. If Grace was Jesus, she'd get crucified and she wouldn't fight back.
Shit, that was me. This is me too, head in hands, lamenting the fact that the goddamn dog was probably the most important character.
I appreciated Catherine's questioning of the characters' free will. That feels like a question that goes beyond Dogville. If you've been raised a certain way that makes your actions inevitable, is that lacking free will? Does the fact that you are a fictional character in a fictional movie mean that free will is also fictional? Are we all in a simulation? Etc. etc. etc.
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