I AM LISTENING to Björk's soundtrack for the film Dancer in the Dark and I am convinced that it is poetry. Though comprised of only seven cuts, a scant 32 minutes and 16 seconds, the world it sees--and this is indeed music possessed of large, ravenous eyes--is so vast, so saturated with brilliant lights and fading colors, seasons and dreams and haunted ambitions, that it threatens to swallow up director Lars von Trier's musical entirely. Which, in many respects, would be a generous act.

Dancer in the Dark is a wonderful film in theory. A snide diatribe against capitalism and Hollywood filmmaking (which are, conveniently, the same thing) dolled up as a sincere musical melodrama and sent our way with the spurned lover's kiss of the European auteur, the film is conceived in an admirable balance of hubris and humility. In exposition, however, Dancer in the Dark suffers gravely from von Trier's ingrained contrarian aesthetic and growing avant-garde laziness--when the film is not wantonly sadistic, it is simply sloppy in a poorly thought-out way. And while von Trier maintains his unique facility for the direction of small, crying women, his other tricks seem woefully inadequate to pull off the feat he sets out to accomplish.

To be sure, there are moments of brilliance. The intellectual rigor with which von Trier constructs--and deconstructs--the melodrama is painfully impressive. There is a scene halfway through where the blind protagonist Selma (played by Björk) is standing trial for the film's inevitable murder. In an impetuous fever of conceit, von Trier uses the form of the courtroom drama to cross-examine the very history of Hollywood filmmaking itself: Dancer in the Dark suddenly must stand trial for one hundred years of melodrama, with its plot contrivances ("And you would have us believe..." they keep berating Selma) brought out as evidence of manipulative intent. The wheels begin turning, the whole layered machine starts shaking, and then, in a final hubristic flourish, the entire court breaks into song and dance as we escape from one celluloid dream into another.

But just as you're about to applaud, the musical number itself collapses, ruining the effect. In fact, it is the cynical carelessness of the musical numbers that definitively frustrate the film's potential. For all the bragging of the "100 digital cameras" used in the song-and-dance sequences, they come off as hack work, neither gracefully staged nor compellingly envisioned. In fact, the very sincere charms of the musical genre he hopes to mock/emulate seem to utterly elude von Trier, as if the Gods of that gilded Hollywood form had seen into his heart and deemed it unfit to receive the sacred teachings of Busby Berkeley and Gene Kelly.

Thankfully, the same Gods looked deep into Björk's heart, and--let us be frank, dear reader--what could they possibly find lacking? Where von Trier pulls lazily back from the challenge, substituting intellect for passion, Björk just fucking goes for it, ripping her heart right out and holding it up in sacrifice--and I'm not even talking about her stunning acting. I'm just talking about those 32 minutes and 16 seconds during which, isolated from von Trier's misdirection, she makes a brilliant musical all on her own.

The seven numbers she contributes to von Trier's potluck of a film range from the lush, soaringly romantic soliloquy "Scatterheart", presented in the film as Selma's post-murderous lullaby to her victim, to the expertly noir "107 Steps," a whirling spiral of a cry, haunted through by the ghost of Bernard Hermann. At the other extreme, "Cvalda" and "In the Musicals" dance with the energy of a cocktail party thrown by Esquivel for the entire cast of "Singin' in the Rain." In only five short numbers, Björk manages to build a complete spine for the film--a spine that von Trier himself lacks.

And yet, this stunning, kaleidoscopic music is entirely her own. Its confluence of metallic noise, electronic pulses, orchestral horns, and virile percussion manages both to update the patterns of classic Hollywood musicals and extend Björk's private obsessions into a new, pristine realm. In particular, the variations on a theme that bookend the film show how utterly Dancer in the Dark belongs to her. Lifting effortlessly upward, morbid and transfixed, overwhelmed by the very passion for sight that is supposed to underpin the film--these songs are profoundly the poetry von Trier cannot create. I'm listening to "New World" now, and my skin tingles and my throat is dry and my eyes lift skyward. It has made my body so cold that no fire can warm me: It is poetry.