Antichrist

[Sefton Disney]

Bugger. Sorry about the double posting, guys. I'm having techno-troubles tonight. I thought my first draft had gotten lost in the aether. Any way to erase it? The second version reads better... Apologies again.

[Tiplodocus]

I saw BREAKING THE WAVES and it was absolutely brilliant stuff. Emily Watson poured herself onto the screen.

Also enjoyed FESTEN

DOGME 95 always struck me as the sort of thing a desperate arty bloke would come up with to convince ladies that it was OK for them to appear nuddy in the film. 

[Peter Wolf]

Let's face it: this thread is far more interesting than any Lars von Trier fim ever made, so we can happily bypass the movie and avoid further inflation of his ego and bank account! :-)

On a more serious note, as long as it makes you think, isn't "provocation" a perfectly acceptable intention for an artist?

It is but there has to be a point or a reason behind the provocation because provocation for no reason or that makes no point is meaningless and pointless.Like you say if it makes you think then thats justification in itself.

[Sefton Disney]

Tiplodocus, I suspect you may well be right about Dogme 95. ;-)

In response to Dogme 95, a gang of Belgian film-makers responded with their own manifesto, Trauma 99, the first article of which was that gratuitous special effects should be used whenever possible. The only Trauma 99 film I ever saw was a version of Little Red Riding Hood in which Don Warrington dressed up Santa Claus and gave a frustrated Italian housewife a good seeing to. At the moment of climax, her racist cop husband murdered Don Warrington. But his daughter came back from the dead and blew the cop's head off, Romero-style, with a 12-gauge riot gun.

Damn, but I like the Belgians.

[I, Cosh]

Well, as I said before, I can definitely see how a lot of von Trier's work can be seen as pretentious or bullshit (as will some of what I'm going to say here) but I tend to view most of it as simply trying to do something a bit different with his films.

On a more serious note, as long as it makes you think, isn't "provocation" a perfectly acceptable intention for an artist?

See, there's the rub.

I agree, sometimes you need to poke people in the ribs to make a point. But, if you're doing it just for the hell of it, then it's just a  stunt. I admit, I've never actually seen a Lars Von Trier film, but reading interviews with the man where he states that he is the best director in the world (it's a fact, don't you know) makes me think he's not so much about making a point as he is about getting noticed.

There's no doubt that he's a bit of an egomaniac, a great self-publicist and probably a dick, but that's when you need to employ the separation of art and artist. Uwe Boll's a big-mouthed dick and his films are shit. Michael Bay's a big-mouthed dick, but The Rock was great. Lars von Trier's a big-mouthed dick but it might be worth watching a couple of his films anyway. I don't know that they all have a "point" and I don't know that I get it if they do. Antichrist certainly seems to be more about mood and uncertainty than anything else and Dancer in the Dark was just plain bizarre.

And for God's sake, making films with NO SETS is the height of bullshit.

I think it's a bit stagey and the kind of thing that would probably work better in the theatre (where he got the idea) but not bullshit. It opens up some interesting narrative possibilities very cheaply. For instance, if we assume the cast treat the demarcations as the walls they are intended to be, it becomes very easy to give the audience a type of omniscience where we can simultaneously see what a number of different characters are doing while they are obscured from each other.

Also, isn't there a parallel between this and the use of greenscreen to lay sets and backgrounds onto the finished performance. I'd say it's considerably less bullshit to film something without a set than to try and make somebody act a scene with Jar Jar Binks.

DOGME 95 always struck me as the sort of thing a desperate arty bloke would come up with to convince ladies that it was OK for them to appear nuddy in the film.

Arf! Good chance. Depressing to think it worked.

I think Lars von Trier and his whole Dogme 95 schtick is completely pretentious bullshit. Why stop at no sets? Why not no music, no plot, no script and no acting? Oh, hang on, that's a Harmony Korine film, isn't it?

Well, in the sense that imposing any set of arbitrary rules onto something artistic is going to become restrictive, yes it is bullshit. However used, as it was initially intended, to galvanise a small group of filmmakers (and anyone else who wanted to join in) to think positively about how they could work around the limitations opposed by lack of cash, equipment and so forth to simply create something I think it's up there with the famous Sniffin' Glue cover:

If you strip away all of the bollocks, the Dogme Manifesto basically boils down to: "Forget about anything that costs money, write a strong dramatic story and shoot it however you can." Pretty solid advice, I'd say, whether you think the individual end products are any good or not.

For my money, Festen's a damned good film that Thomas Vinterberg's come nowhere near matching while I think (without exaggerating) The Idiots is probably the best film made in the last 25 years. I don't think I've ever been so affected by a film. Whatever else he might be, von Trier has a rare ability to coax performances out of his cast, particularly the leading ladies.

I've never seen his tv series The Kingdom, but IMDB categorises it as "Comedy, Drama, Horror, Mystery" which sounds good to me.

[Sefton Disney]

Really interesting post, Cosh. Perhaps I was being a bit provocative myself, although I hope to some purpose.

You are, of course, quite right about separating the man from his art. And, since a robust ego and a knack for getting noticed are pretty essential for any film-maker, we might be a trifle unfair to criticize von Trier for such things. You also have to wonder if some of his more outrageous comments might be examples of dry humour failing to come across on paper.

Nonetheless, I think you rather make my point about Dogme 95 for me. Surely, "work within your resources and concentrate on plot and performance" is advice that's as old as narrative cinema. To dress it up as some kind of radical re-invention is either an act of blatant hype or self-deluding pretension.

Interesting point about the setless performance. I hadn't really thought of it that way, perhaps because I see it as a Brecht-ian theatrical idea, rather than a cinematic one. Which, of course, says more about my attitude to cinema than it does about Lars von Trier. But I do think theatre and cinema work in very different ways, despite the surface similarity and that it might be selling cinema short to turn it into filmed theatre.

I was really lookinh forward to The Kingdom when it ran on BBC2 years ago, but I just couldn't get into it for some reason. Then again, I didn't like Kingdom Hospital all that much either.

[chaingunchimp]

sorry know this a really old thread, but i watched Antichrist over the weeked (as well as watching a scanners boxset.
i had been quite excited about finally getting a copy and was not Disappointed, I thought it was a really beautifully shot  film.
The sex scenes which h caused so much controversy where very graphic but fitted well with the plot of the film. And actually reminded me of the scenes in: Dont look now. (but a little more hard core)
And it's been a long time since I (a self confessed gore hound) have felt the need to shield my eyes while watching a film. But I don't think I have seen violence and gore used so effectively in a film in a long time. Sparse but very brutal, and meant to appal rather than entertain.
Very good but difficult to watch film, definitely added to my repeat viewing pile.