The narrator operates akin to a Greek chorus or the voice of a fable. He does not merely describe events; he judges them. He informs the audience of the town's hypocrisy ("The town was mediocre in every way") and the internal thoughts of characters that cannot be expressed through dialogue. This creates a distance between the viewer and the action (the Verfremdungseffekt). The script utilizes this narration to control the moral tempo of the film, guiding the audience through the logical fallacies of the townspeople until the brutal climax. The narrator is our guide, but he is an unreliable one, leading us into a trap of moral relativism.
The script is divided into , each with a title (e.g., “Prologue: The Rocky Road to Dogville,” “Chapter 1: The Sound of Gunfire”). dogville script