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Breaking The Waves (1996)
This was going to go into the saddest films section here, but it could equally belong in the disturbing section because it's both of those things. Emily Watson is Bess - a young Scottish girl living on one of the islands in the North Sea who marries a much older Scandanavian man who works on the oil rigs. After he's paralysed in an accident he asks her to basically engage in promiscuous sex with the other islanders so he can vicariously experience them through her. That's really quite disturbing because the situations Bess finds herself in are psychologically devastating for a person who's been around the block a few times, let alone Bess who's such an innocent soul, and we know, even if she doesn't that the outcome hasn't a chance of being anything but tragic. To cap it all off Bess becomes a pariah on the island, ending up being despised by the very people that are a party to her behaviour. She finally dies a humiliating and painful death at the hands of some vicious sailors, which is depressing enough, but when the prurient and hypocritical island church officials deem her sins in life to be so heinous as to deny her a decent burial it's just too much to take. This is one of the most profoundly tragic and disturbing tales ever set to celluloid, helped tremendously by a stellar performance from Emily Watson, and a great script by von Trier.
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The Five Obstructions (2003)
Lars von Trier is one of these directors who can stun you with a masterpiece one year then boggle your mind with some severely mis-judged mess the next. He's an innovator who likes to step outside the conventional way of doing things and this can yield great results, but can sometimes be so misconceived that no-one could pull it off. On hearing about this project I wouldn't have been surprised if this turned out to be one of his failed experiments but in actual fact it's much closer to a masterpiece than a mess. Here he teams up with fellow Dane Jorgen Leth, who directed 'The Perfect Human' - a famous short from 1967, much revered by von Trier. The two dissect the film and von Trier sets about tormenting Leth by setting him the task of remaking this film five times, each time differently, and with extreme restrictions imposed on him, such as re-shooting the film in Cuba, and with no shot lasting more than twelve frames. With von Trier a particularly hard task-master Leth is under the gun, but rises to the occasion time and again, with some elegant solutions. This film offers an intriguing portrait of the two men, the power dynamics between them, their very different personalities, and their different approaches to filmmaking, and is an absolutely fascinating and frequently hilarious examination of the creative impulse from two different generations of the most creative forces in the Danish film industry. |
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Antichrist (2009)
The first fifteen minutes of so of Lars Von Trier's new shocker seems to sets out its stall in no uncertain terms. A child toppling out of a high-rise window to its death, while the parents (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) indulge in a bit of soft focus hardcore sex all in black and white, high definition slow motion. Reminded me of some sort of twisted Calvin Klein advert. However, after this brief introduction the film settles down to a much more earthy and less glitzy psychological horror (in colour), but the intent to shock remains. The couple retreat to a cabin in the woods to get away from it all after the loss of their child, and shortly thereafter Gainsbourg starts to lose her marbles and sees Dafoe as the cause of all her woes. Cue a lot of emotional hand-wringing, psychological probing and, eventually, a whole mess of very graphic violence and much gore. Von Trier was obviously aiming to make the sort of horror film he believes horror afficianados dream of; an involving story featuring realistic and hard-hitting acts of violence in a believable setting with convincing performances from well-respected actors. Alas he hasn't quite achieved this because as the events unfold they get more and more outrageous and gaping holes begin to appear in the plot, such as it is. However, the cinematography is breathtaking and the performances from Dafoe and Gainsbourg are both fine. Gainsbourg is particularly effective as the disturbed and grieving mother struggling to get over the loss of her child while being increasingly resentful of the control her husband is trying to exert on her life and their marriage. One could spend days arguing about the allegorical subtext and meaning of the various symbols used in this film, but whatever interpretation you come up with the overall effect is deeply unsettlling. |
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Melancholia (2011)
With this film Lars von Trier seems to have come up with a kind of weird companion piece to Terrence Malick's Tree of Life. It's like an anti-Tree of Life; a Tree of Death if you will. Despite its themes of loss, regret and man's fall from grace Malick's film is still life-affirming and hopeful in the end, whereas von Trier's is steadfastly bleak. This film is plumbed from the depths of von Trier's own bouts of depression during which he noticed that in times of upheaval people suffering from depression are very calm. Apart from detailing the destruction of Earth by a rogue planet on a collision course the film deals with two sisters and charts how each deals with the impending doom. It's split into two halves - the first half, entitled Justine concerns one sister who suffers from depression, and who is about to be married. It does a good job of thrusting the viewer into the abyss that is a depressive's life and shows how this affects all those who come into contact with Justine. The second half concerns the other sister, Claire who is the stable half of the sisterly equation. However as the reality of the situation sinks in she begins to unravel, as Justine becomes more calm the closer armageddon looks to be. It's an interesting film to be sure - whether von Trier is to your taste or not at the very least he seems incapable of making a boring film, and there's a lot to be said for that. However there are a few problems here, such as his incessant reliance on handheld camera techniques. Although this was key to the dogme style that von Trier helped spearhead in the mid nineties, it doesn''t seem appropriate for this film dealing as it does with huge objects in the distance, and featuring significant use of pristine CGI effects. Having a constantly bobbing camera becomes very wearing after a while and doesn't tend to add much once you know the kind of effect the director is going after. Having said that the premise of the film is intriguing, the cinematography is sometimes breathtaking, there is some striking imagery to appreciate throughout and the performances are all deeply unsettlling. |
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Nymphomaniac I & II (2013)
Leave it to Lars von Trier to make a film that deals with sex in a defiantly uncompromising and provocative way. (Technically it's two films, but it's actually one really long film split into two for commercial reasons). In fact, given von Trier's track record one should expect nothing less of him. Nymphomaniac features full frontal nudity, erect penises, full penetration, sado-masochism - you name it. However, If you're entering into this just for the sex then you're probably in for a huge disappointment, because for every full-on sex scene there are liberal doses of philosophy, self-loathing, cruelty, betrayal, misery and death. And a few laughs. In short, it's a Lars von Trier film. Proceedings kick off with our protagonist Joe, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, lying bleeding in a dank alleyway. Seligman, a passerby offers her tea and sympathy in his nearby flat, and the rest of the film is an account by Joe of her formative years, sexual awakening and burgeoning nymphomania as told to Seligman - another fine performance by von Trier regular Stellan Skarsgård as a lonely, cerebral and seemingly asexual man who finds Joe's story more psychologically fascinating than erotic or titillating. And for the most part it is pretty fascinating, if a little clunky at times; Von Trier's literary aspirations here exceed his grasp in terms of subtlety and nuance but the writing is good for the most part, with flashes of brilliance here and there. Aside from the impressively cinematic opening scene in the alleyway both films are shot in a very direct, unfussy way, which compliments Charlotte Gainsbourg's distinctively muted style of acting particularly well. Stacy Martin is a bit of a weak link as the younger Joe, but Shia LaBeouf is surprisingly effective playing her frustrated lover. Uma Thurman steals the first film though, with an incendiary five minute burst of frenzied jealousy that kicks things into a higher gear, and sets the scene for the second film which is more intriguing as we delve deeper into Joe's psyche. The second film is more narrative driven and introduces a sub-plot about extortion and robbery which falls flat, but it also contains some of the most powerful scenes from either film, including Joe's introduction to S&M - which features a terrifically on form Jamie Bell. The total running time of these two films is just over four and a half hours, and taken as a whole it's a bit of a mixed bag. I can't help thinking that this current running time would benefit from the excision of sixty minutes, rather than an additional sixty, as was apparently von Trier's original intention. Time will tell, as in all likelihood the full five and a half hour cut will be available when it's released on DVD.
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