Thesis Statement:
Lars von Trier, a Danish writer, director and film maverick. He dissects modern cinema only to revive it with refined aesthetics. His cinema speaks not one language, but many. Director of 14 feature films, 12 short films, a telefilm and a documentary. No two films are alike, yet you can identify a von Trier film by one main keyword: provocation.
While venturing the essence of the human’s psych, he manages to explicitly weave his films with his confident philosophy through unconventional stylisation; his portrayal is raw. He does not mask or beautify the dimensions of the human being, and to many people this is revolting and inadmissible. To me, this is cinema. And this is what earns him the title of a film extremist.
Background:
Let us pause for a second and identify provocation. Provocation is a form of expression that questions all that is known by putting one’s awareness at stake, judging it, deconstructing it, defying it and proving it. There’s no doubt that it can become very personal, it acquires tolerance and a broad spectrum of rationale, no placements of absolutes. It is an art form no matter how extreme, and indeed it is not for the faint-hearted.
Cinema is a personal art platform, I would argue that it is the most personal platform. It is an audio-visual experience that could either be fiction or non-fiction, but in both and most cases it resembles reality. No other art form has the fulfilment of the dimensional experience that cinema has. That is why I believe that cinema – especially nowadays with its accessibility – is a cultural and a political weapon. And von Trier exhibits a loaded one.
Only when one allows the comprehension of Von Trier’s enigma can one savour the intensity he portrays.
“… The finest filmmakers are those who raise questions. Questions not only about the boundaries of art, but how in breaching those boundaries we paradoxically broaden the capabilities of cinema.” – Lewis Bond.
Lars von Trier leads a rather unusual life; he was brought up as a jew only to learn from his dying mother at the age of 33 that his actual biological father is a non-jewish German. This, and depression, super-ego, multiple phobias, alcoholism and many more issues all brand von Trier and make his persona idiosyncratic. Other people would delve in and treat these complexities in an introspective manner, but von Trier tells his stories and reflects his truest in his films. This allows him to project a truer story with a more transparent storytelling technique, that which breaks all barriers between the artist and the audience, enabling us to be part of the piece rather than being absented and dictated like most mainstream films today attain.
His eccentric character did not stop with his films, von Trier is known for being open to the media about his complex life. In 2011 at his film “Melancholia” press conference in Cannes Film Festival, von Trier responded to a question about his German roots in a way that caused him a great controversy, granted him a “persona non-grata” and banned him from the festival for one year:
“I thought I was a Jew for a long time and I was very happy being a Jew”, he later adds “But then I found out I was actually a Nazi. My family were German which also gave me some pleasure. What can I say? I understand Hitler…I sympathize with him a little bit.” (Von Trier, 2011)
Body
“The art of painting must have started when someone drew on the wall of a cave. That probably continued a century or so. It would have started with tiny little lines, then gradually became more complicated. The lines turned into a bison or some other creature. Bearing in mind the position that art has reached now, countless centuries later, we might compare cinema with art. Cinema is a mere hundred years old and we've just worked out how to draw a bison. There's a long way to go. That’s why I’m very optimistic about the future. And Lars, with his films, has proved that he is at the forefront of this development. There is every reason to be optimistic about the future of film – and that of Lars of Von Trier.” (Björkman, 2005).
Those films that I first hated lingered most, they oftentimes challenge my comprehension of the tools of cinema, my ideals or even my tolerance. Having watched most of von Trier’s films, each time it is an experience and each film breaks the rules of the one before. Von Trier’s filmography promises change and deprivation of self-indulgence. Just when the story and the style are in harmony, this is when it is time to change and deconstruct.
“Freud may be dead, but Trier’s practice brings psychotherapeutic mythes and methods to the creative act, which he portrays as inseparable from self-fashioning – a process with crucial cultural and political ramifications.” (Badley, 2011)
The Beginning (Europa trilogy, breaking the waves):
Von Trier’s leap to the international independent film scene started with a film trilogy under the title of Europa, which includes THE ELEMENT OF CRIME (1984), EPIDEMIC (1987) and “Europa” (1991). Three stylistically diverse films sharing the same backdrop that depicts Europe in dystopian times. THE ELEMENT OF CRIME is in many considerations von Trier’s directorial debut, however, it highly expresses cinematic maturity. The film takes place during an English investigator’s hypnosis in Cairo who is trying to recall his last investigation of a serial killing. The story becomes explicit upon the insertion of animal abuse, strangling of a child and hearing the call to prayers in the background as two characters get involved in an intercourse. This only made it incontrovertible that a ‘provocateur’ is born.
The premise doesn’t stop here as the director portrayed dystopian Europe in an odd setting; shot in English language (with some Arabic insertion) by Danish money in Denmark, with a cacophony of accents and cast, which later in von Trier’s career becomes more evident as he plays against the uniformity of the settings in each of his films.
Aesthetically, THE ELEMENT OF CRIME was completely shot at night in an emphasis to demonising the setting. The camera and set design have composed beautiful shots of reflections, dynamic depth and their harmony managed well to poetise the story, which in no means is a poetic one. “Every shot of THE ELEMENT OF CRIME had been planned drawn and rehearsed, and every location had been reconnoitred beforehand.” (Simons, 2007). This meticulous process gets completely hammered upon von Trier’s DOGME95 set of rules (or the Vow of Chastity) that restricted such planning and manipulation and bared his DOGME95 films down to a skeleton work of art, which assured vivid changes in von Trier’s films, dated to now.
Dogmatic shadows (DOGME95, the idiots, dancer in the dark, US Trilogy)
“If you have some limitations when you work, like these rules [DOGME95 film movement’s rules] or like other things, then you are forced to kind of use your imagination”. Von Trier expresses in an interview. He later adds “It’s provocative in the sense that you have this idea – especially in Europe – being an artist as being completely free, and this is part of being an artist, and that is what the whole idea of DOGME is arguing.”
(Sophie Fiennes’s LARS FROM 1-10)
Forty-three minutes it took Lars Von Trier and his Danish fellow director Thomas Vinterberg to compose the manifesto of the film movement DOGME95 in the year (1995), thus the name. DOGME95 emerged as a resurrection for cinema, at a time when mainstream films were screening on every household’s televisions and the mass was lining up to watch JURASSIC PARK, THE LION KING, TERMINATOR and such. Hollywood became the familiar. The idea behind this movement is simply to steer filmmakers away from the manipulation of the cinematic gimmicks and the conventional apparatus that high-budget films have exclusively claimed, and support low-budget films through evoking the filmmakers to focus on the artistry of film.
In order for a film to earn the DOGME95 certificate, the manifesto has put together a set of restrictions for directors to fulfil:
1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a prop is necessary to the story, a location must be chosen where the prop is to be found).
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the image, or vice versa (music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shoot).
3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place).
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure, the scene must occur, or a single lamp may be attached to the camera.)
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden
6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur).
7. Temporal and geographical alienation is forbidden. (That is to say the film must take place in the here and now).
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The film must be Academy 35mm.
10. The director must not be credited.
In the ten years of DOGME95 only thirty-nine films earned the certification. One of the most acclaimed films was that of von Trier THE IDIOTS. This film is one of the first films ever shot with a digital camera back in (1998). The film tells the story of a cult group gathered to release their inner idiots by behaving in a mentally retarded manner in a community of normal people. This film pushed many boundaries, and played – yet again – on the line of provocation including a clear societal criticism of stereotyping mentally retarded people as well as having unsimulated sex scenes and an orgy. “His portrayal of young oddballs as revolutionaries embracing what they term their "inner idiots" to test base urges in a button-down society is fascinating and curiously liberating.” (Peter Stack, San Francisco Chronicle).
http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/FILM-CLIPS-Also-opening-this-week-2778943.php#idiots
“By turns unpleasant and watchable – or maybe, watchable because it's unpleasant – "The Idiots," which was greeted with take-cover shock at Cannes two years ago, demonstrates that sadomasochistic streak in von Trier that equates the raw with the experimental.” (Wesley Morris, EXAMINER FILM CRITIC)
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Idiots-versus-the-bourgeoisie-3060656.php
DOGME95 undoubtedly raised filmmakers’ awareness against the mainstream. It stretched an extreme for independent cinema to explore.
As the hype of DOGME95 started to weight-down, its footprint became evident especially on the work of von Trier. DANCER IN THE DARK (2000) and DOGVILLE (2003) rendered and exhibited polished possibilities.
Depression (Depression trilogy):
Another trilogy von Trier composes, this time called “The Depression Trilogy”; ANTICHRIST (2009), MELANCHOLIA (2011) and NYMPHOMANIAC (2013). Von Trier in this trilogy reaches a viable extreme in his provocation. ANTICHRIST, about ***
Scenes of unsimulated sex between the main characters, masturbation, genital imputation and even a female self- circumsision. Disturbing images rated R in big red line, it got banned for 9 years since its international release in France. It screams controversy. But the context even though some critics as misogynistic and disturbing, the film speaks about delicate humane issues of a woman grieving over the death of her infant, a man helpless, of power and the misuse of power.
FIrst time I watched it I had to cover my eyes to much of it. But this is what von Trier’s cinema is about; gruesome transparency, why should he mask what is true no matter how extreme.
MELANCHOLIA, a story about the end of the world…
NYMPHOMANIAC; a five hour story about a nymphomaniac.
Again images shatter the screen. Some call it ***