Dogville is a tiny town consisting of just seven households and 15 adults in total. Tom Edison (Paul Bettany) is the resident philosopher, who plans to write a book about morality but has not yet begun. He also serves as the town mayor, holding community meetings on moral rearmament in the local church. When a beautiful woman, Grace (Nicole Kidman), arrives in town claiming she is being chased by gangsters, Dogville welcomes her and agrees to grant her refuge but at a cost. Grace must prove herself to Dogville's residents, first through physical labor, then through friendship, then through utterly astonishing sacrifices that, in classic von Trier style, go way beyond anything viewers might imagine. It is a bizarre and disturbing film,

Grace is used by the townsfolk as servant then slave becoming more and more demanding of her and punishing her for running away by putting a iron dog collar round her neck and attaching a chain and fixing it to a heavy iron wheel. She can move round slowly from place to place dragging the wheel. All the while grace remains quiet placid and uncomplaining. She even submits to being used as the town prostitute by all the male residents. Eventually they want rid of her and call the gangsters. But the townsfolk do not know what they are doing - perhaps they think she is just some gangster's moll.

The gangsters return. The townsfolk hand her over and she is led to the biggest car and sits on the back seat with “the godfather”. Seated at the right hand of the father she talks to her daddy whom she had run away from (and you wonder was she a prodigal daughter fleeing his life of crime) They converse about revenge and taking up the power and the inheritance he offers her. An interesting almost philosophical discussion in which she eventually asks her father to give her the power now. He agrees. And she says memorably - “I want to use this power to make the world a better place. “

There is a pause and you think of mercy and all that Grace has suffered and then she says “The world will be a better place if Dogville ceases to exist - Shoot all the people here and then burn it down.”. She and her father sit in the limousine and watch as her orders are carried out.

This film deals with the religious ideas of forgiveness using the ironically named Grace. I think of this story with the bible tale of Joseph (he of the amazing Technicolor dreamcoat). In the middle of the story is this account of Joseph's forgiveness of his brothers following the death of their father Jacob. The heart of the passage Joseph says to his brothers: "Am I in the place of God?" In other words, is it I who should judge you? This rhetorical question clearly expects the answer, certainly not - God alone may judge. But more than a bare refraining from judgment, Joseph offers concrete forgiveness of his brothers, promising to provide for them and their dependants.

Sunday school musicals may have bred familiarity with Joseph's magnanimity, which causes us to miss its astonishing nature. Joseph was half-killed, then sold and written off for dead. His father was deceived into an appalling grief. Families today are often bitterly divided over far less than this dysfunctional group. But Joseph never took his chance to judge, preferring the good of many people than the fleeting pleasure of revenge. It is a good, if near impossible, example to follow.

Jesus repeatedly exhorts forgiveness. In the parable of the unforgiving servant the discrepancy between how the king's servant is treated by the king and how he treats another servant in turn is the main point. He is forgiven an unimaginably large sum. Yet he will not forgive a measly debt, infinitesimally smaller. The king, angrier at his servant's hard-heartedness than his original debt, revokes his earlier forgiveness.

The moral is clear. What we have to forgive is minute compared with what we need to be forgiven. Furthermore, in being forgiven so much by God, we have an example of mercy to follow. Without this example, our meanness might be understandable: with the example, it is inexcusable. Indeed, the parable clearly indicates that the unforgiving have no right to expect mercy.

Forgiveness or vengeance and wrath: Could people really worship a God who behaved like Grace in Dogville? This film certainly started me thinking.