Critique of Calculation: Labour, Productivity, Limits, and Love in Lars von Trier’s Dogville

<jats:p> Abstract: I argue in this article that Lars von Trier’s Dogville (2003) is a film that prolongs a philosophical tradition of critique of reification. Making use of Marx and Lukács’s work, I highlight the concept of calculation for analyzing the story of the protagonist, Grace, as a tale of exploitation based on mechanisms of labour exchange. My aim, however, is not only to describe this process in terms of Dogville’s storyline, but to ontologically characterize the cinematographic language and devices of the film as a visual allegory of the problem of calculation in contemporary capitalism. By making transparent the “limits” of everything (Dogville’s architecture, the exchange rates in Grace’s labour-power, and the limits of the film’s diegesis, for instance), von Trier creates in Dogville what I call “calculative cinema.” Following the Kantian notion of “critique,” I propose that Dogville explores the limits of the mechanisms of calculation in cinematic terms. </jats:p>