Dancer: Ebert Review

Ebert's review calls Dancer in the Dark "... a bold, reckless gesture." Reckless makes it sound like it has no direction or purpose. But maybe it means that it's intended purpose is to wildly contradict the status quot. I think that's what the musical scenes do; they contradict anything the viewer expects.  I see why "It is valid to dislike it, but not fair to criticize it on the grounds of plausibility, because the movie has made a deliberate decision to be implausible: The plot is not a mistake but a choice." 
In this way, Dancer in the Dark is an outsider in it's own genre of American film. Naturally, viewers are going to dislike it because it is unconventional. But it is actually very conventional; it goes back to basics, by omitting flashy camera  tricks. The level of staging that it employs may come off as fake to some people, but I would argue that it makes it more real. We can see everything the camera does; the film doesn't hide behind any edits or enhancements. It's raw and believable because it is staged, because we see everything the director does.  

Dancer in the Dark first impressions

That was a very difficult film to watch. At first I thought Selma was actually Gene's sister because she looked so young. I thought adults would help her because of that. I also thought Jeff was a creepy guy, waiting to drive her home every day. But this is another film that tells the audience that people are not always what they seem. The cop and his wife looked like they were the only ones to help her, but they were responsible for her downward spiral. All Selma wanted to do was give her son what she couldn't have: sight. She physically and metaphorically lost her sight, trusting the wrong people to help her.
The film was also very staged. Selma was an actor in the Sound of Music, and once she took herself out of it, her whole life became a musical as a way to escape her tragedies. She used rhythms and dancing to get her through her tough times. In every single "number" that Selma fantasized, a man was always there to help her (the police officer forgiving her, her son singing "you just did what you had to", workmen on the train tracks with her and Jeff, Novie who tap-danced with her on the judge's desk). At the final close of the curtain (literally and figuratively), a quote affirms what Selma always thought: the last song never has to be the last song if you don't think it is. The phone rings after her last song, but she has been given closure when Cathy gives her Gene's glasses.

Ebert Rashomon review & motivations

Ebert's review is very interested in Kurosawa's use of the camera and what it reflects. It says,"Because we see the events in flashbacks, we assume they reflect truth. But all they reflect is a point of view, sometimes lied about." In this way, Rashomon soft-sells its audience; it never directly says to trust one character's story over another's. Kurosawa claimed, "... in his autobiography, 'Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves.'" The normal human response is to immediately conclude that the bandit committed the murder because, after all, he is a bandit.  
But the film's goal is to have us trust the criminal just as much as much as the innocent woodcutter. Camera use reflects this; "Because they are usually pointed at real things, we usually think we can believe what we see. The message of "Rashomon" is that we should suspect even what we think we have seen." Kurosawa plays the 8th juror by purposefully leading us through a twisted story line to show that the bandit's testimony deserves just as much weight as the woman's, or the medium's, or the woodcutter's. All humans err, and all humans have the ability to start over.