When I look at Lars von Trier, it always seems to me that he has swastikas tattooed on his fingers. Quatsch. It is not true. He has the word F ** K written. These are already blackouts in my memory. Swastikas, in fact, covered the building of the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen. In principle, the whole of Copenhagen is evenly covered with swastikas - starting with the buildings of the Carlsberg brewery. This is your swastika - this is the swastika, and in Copen it is a sign of happiness and good luck.
However, the tattoo with clumsy letters "Fuck you" at Trier also does not cancel. If only because it is impossible to love Trier. He cancels in advance the term "love" in relation to himself. Therefore, it is customary to hate him. And there is a reason. Because, as a director, Lars von Trier is a cynical manipulator who crawls into your head with his cold, wet plumber's hands and presses on the right parts of your brain. Ding - and you sobbed over little Bjork, do you - and you sobbed over little Emily Watson, bams - and you're already going crazy with Willem Dafoe. In general, this type does what he wants to do with the audience, testing the boundaries of the possible. And then he breaks them.
When a new film by Trier comes out (he is not a "background", he invented this nonsense for fun), for example, I do my best to watch it as late as possible.
Let the more daring and more emotionally dumb ones break off on it for a start.
I probably would have loved not to watch his films at all.
Because his profession is to break your heart.
And since there are enough things in life that break the heart anyway, Lars, with his fictional, cold-bloodedly constructed horrors of being in this queue, let him be the last.
But here's the problem - you can't not watch them.
Painfully a great artist, this Lars von Trier - you can't go round on a crooked mare.
Sometimes I think that he treats the viewer this way, because he himself is the fruit of eugenics, which was branded as a Nazi science. His mother, looking at her husband, decided that nothing good would be born from such a dull pepper, and quite deliberately conceived from a completely different man who had good creative genes and was from a good creative family of a Danish classical organist. Apparently, after Lars found out that he was nothing more than a puppy, whose color was supported by the correct mating, his attitude towards the world became somewhat specific. And at the same time he learned that now he is not a Jew at all, contrary to the previous version.
Well, what did you want from your parents - nudist leftists? All these fashionable concepts of "free upbringing", which were worked out on it, are nothing more than beautiful packaging for parental indifference. It is no wonder that he could not finish high school - "he did not fit into the strict framework." It's no wonder when you have nudist camps with parents instead of children's camps every summer. But at the age of ten he shot his first short film with a household camera. And then at the age of 12 he managed to act in the movie "The Secret Summer" with Thomas Winding, who was a super popular narrator of children's fairy tales, and the whole country loved his voice. He was fascinated by the technical side of cinema, and after half a year he crammed into the studio as a real "boy for everything" - to whom to bring light, to whom to bring coffee.
Then he made his first swoop on the Copenhagen film school (the one that is all in swastons on the facade), but the school deftly dodged it. Then he signed up with Filmgrupp 16, an association of film lovers, and went to work on a pull to the Danish Film Fund. There, in his spare time, he shot two short films - "The Gardener Growing Orchids" (1977) and "Mint Blessed" (1979). In "The Gardener" there is a scene when a hero in Nazi uniform paints his eyelashes with mascara. The second film was also about the war. That is, Lars was a great entertainer from his youth. These two films became his pass to film school, where he studied until 1983. His graduation film "Paintings of Liberation" (originally Befrielsesbilleder) was even released, which was the first time that happened to film students in Denmark in history. Moreover, it was shown at the Berlin Film Festival.
Trier's first full-length film "The Crime Element" (1984) showed that Lars studied the theory of cinema for a reason.
It's like a thriller, detective, neo-noir, but on the other hand, from the third minute of screen time it gives off so much “Stalker” and other Tarkovsky that it became clear that critics will definitely like such a movie.
They say that even the ears of "Andrei Rublev" can be seen there, but I missed something.
On the shoulders of the Soviet giants, Trier rode right up to the nomination for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, at the same time receiving a large prize from the technical commission of this film show.
And "Crime Element" became the first film of the "Europe" trilogy.
The great thing about this movie is that it's incredibly boring.
"Boring" in a good sense of the word - children do not fall out of the window during their mother's orgasm, the sky does not fall to the ground and do not offend blind girls.
All this will come later.
In the second film of the trilogy - "Epidemics" - the author is already giving in to the heat and trying to make a horror about the scriptwriters.
And the third - "Europe" (1991) - is made as if Frank Miller decided to draw his comics in the Frankfurt camp for German prisoners of war in 1945.
The words sounded in the picture: “Company“ Centropa ”.
This will be the name of Lars Trier's own production company, who has already added the aristocratic prefix "von" to the surname without any reason.
Simply because other directors did it.
Suddenly, along the way, he shot a music video for the Bakerman song by the band Laid Back.
They are, of course, cute, but what does Lars (von) Trier have to do with it?
In order to earn some money, Trier directed the mini-series "Kingdom" (1994) for television. Danes and Swedes usually laugh giggly, looking at the screen, because there are many jokes that other Europeans simply do not get (for example, about the Swedish nuclear power plant in Malmö). And his main achievement - he brought the manual camera, which was promoted by Jean-Luc Godard in the early films, to complete insanity. The viewer is simply seasick. I watched "The Kingdom" at the Berlin Festival, and still had to leave the cinema: although I am a mechanical engineer for ship propulsion systems and know what the Barents Sea is in winter, it is too much for my vestibular apparatus.
Breaking the Waves (1996) was a real breakthrough for him. Here he found his perfect recipe for raping the emotions of the viewer. There are fears about mental illness, physical trauma, sexual humiliation, bordering on perversion, and religious conflict, and so on. And most importantly, he tramples his boots on your tear bags, making the viewer practically a masochist. This is the first film in the Heart of Gold trilogy, which includes, among other things, Idiots and Dancer in the Dark.
For the sake of order, let us note that by this time Trier and Thomas Winterberg had issued a film manifesto "Dogma 95", which established some rules for like-minded filmmakers.
But “Breaking the Waves” immediately violated these norms, in particular, by nevertheless building the scenery, using computer graphics and superimposed music in the editing.
Which, of course, the participants in "Dogma" should not do.
The goal was correct, but the funds were useless.
The New Wave was just a slight ripple;
the wave washed the coastal sand and rolled back ... Today's rampage of technological onslaught will lead to the extreme democratization of cinema.
For the first time, anyone can make a movie.
But the more accessible a means of mass communication becomes, the more important is its vanguard.
1. Filming must take place on location.
Props and decorations cannot be used.
2. Musical accompaniment should not go separately from the image or vice versa.
3. The camera must be manual.
Any movement or immobility is dictated only by the capabilities of the human hand.
4. The film must be in color.
5. Optical effects and filters are prohibited.
6. The film must not contain imaginary action (murders, shooting, etc. cannot be part of the film).
7. Plots where the action takes place in another era or in another country are prohibited (the action must take place here and now).
In short, the first thing Trier did was violate his own manifesto.
Although the film "Idiots" fits well into its framework.
In total, 35 films were shot within the framework of "Dogma" by various directors from different countries.
But, as for me, Winterberg's "Triumph" and "Mifune's Last Song" by Kragh-Jacobsen remain the best.
Staying within strict limits is a great art.
Speaking of Trier’s ability to set obstacles to other people, it’s not bad to watch the documentary Five Hurdles (2003), in which he invites the classic 1960s director Jorgen Leth to make a remake of his film The Perfect Man.
But with conditions and restrictions.
In the meantime, Breaking the Waves won the Grand Prix in Cannes, Emily Watson was nominated for an Oscar and many other prizes.
In 1998, the second film of the Heart of Gold trilogy, Idiots, was released.
A group of anti-bourgeois citizens are playing the fool, and everyone is looking for an "inner idiot" in themselves.
Judging by the abundance of naked flesh and genitals, this is a big hello from Trier's parents - nudist leftists.
The film was nominated for Cannes, received nothing.
And in general, festivals were scored on him.
Only the journalistic jury of FIPRESCI gave him something at the London Film Festival.
Does anyone even know what they're watching at the London Film Festival?
Here I myself recently entered somewhere at the London Festival with a short meter - I still can't figure out where.
Lars von Trier is anyone but an idiot.
He was the first to realize that you can't earn much on "Dogma".
And so the third film from the trilogy - Dancer in the Dark (2000) - was completely, completely different.
First, it is a musical film.
Secondly, he invited Bjork to the main role, who was then almost at the height of fame, but third and fourth - he made the most tear-squeezing story about a girl who goes blind, a robbery, a death sentence - full house.
And it worked.
The Oscar was nominated for the title song I've seen it all, Bjork became the best actress at the Cannes Film Festival, and Trier himself was the best director, the film was nominated for a couple of Golden Globes, he became the best Danish film at the national film award, became the best European film at the Goya Awards and so on.
But in order for you to understand how much von Trier is a calculating businessman, you must at least know that while you were crying over the fate of Selma, the heroine of Bjork, von Trier had already repainted the scenery of the prison where Bjork was filmed pink - literally - and was already filming lesbian porn ...
But now you know why and how "Nymphomaniac" (2013) arose.
If you wake me up in a Copenhagen hotel in the middle of the night and ask me sternly: "What's the best film in Lars von Trier?"
- I will not hesitate to say: "Dogville" (2003).
In fact, this is generally one of the best films that could be directed.
To the gallery page
No stage set, theater-at-the-microphone style, with the beautiful Nicole Kidman as Grace Mulligan, who turns out to be a terrific dramatic actress, and the heat of passion and hatred that melts the wires.
I don't know what they teach there at Copenhagen Film School, but I think that they just need to look closely at Dogville and they can safely go for a diploma.
The unity of place and time of action.
Out of time.
No action.
Solid classics and avant-garde at the same time.
"Manderlay" (2005) repeats all the bells and whistles of "Dogville", even the heroine is the same - Grace Mulligan.
Here she is played by Bryce Dallas Howard.
But I don't want to watch something a second time.
In general, in this trilogy "USA - Land of Opportunities" there is also "Washington", but it has not yet been filmed.
I don't know why Trier hates America so much, but in this he is in solidarity with another great northerner - Aki Kaurismaki.
In 2006, he directed the comedy The Biggest Boss.
The picture begins as a surreal comedy, but still ends with reflections on the fate of capitalism.
But it doesn't matter, but Trier tried an amazing technology in the picture - Automavision.
The director sets the camera to the best position, and then the computer randomly chooses how to work with the lens: zoom in, out, angle.
In 2007, the director decides to somehow settle scores with his student youth and makes an autobiographical film “The Young Years: Eric Nietzsche.
Part 1 ".
At the same time, for some reason he calls himself Eric Nietzsche.
The Depression Trilogy is Antichrist, Melancholy and Nymphomaniac.
Not only is the director himself depressed, but he depresses even the bollards in Copenhagen's New Harbor with these films.
He knows how to do it.
"Antichrist" is just a collection of all the most terrible things that can happen to a person and what people themselves do to each other.
I omit the details of the death of babies, cutting off the genitals, etc. - anyway, some snowflakes and unicorns will be deleted.
"Melancholy" (2011) he calls "Germanic novel", which does not add fun.
He was really depressed. And when a local journalist began to harass him about the "German romance" at the Cannes Film Festival, he freaked out and said that since now he is not a Jew (because of his mother's decision to conceive from an ethnic German), then, most likely, he is a German and a Nazi. Moreover, now he "understands Hitler." What started here! The press immediately fanned these deeply personal sarcastic remarks as an anti-Semitic scandal, and Trier was made persona non grata at the Cannes Film Festival. Nevertheless, the actress Kirsten Dunst received "Best Actress" at the same Cannes Film Festival for her role in this film. Sight & Sound magazine included the picture in the list of the best films ever made. Then the director of the Cannes Film Festival said that the scandal was stupid and out of nowhere, and in general von Trier is a friend.
Well, with "Nymphomaniac" (2013), everything is also clear - it is difficult to come up with a more asexual picture.
For three years Lars filmed The House That Jack Built.
It was shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
And despite the fact that one hundred faint-hearted spectators left the show, the rest gave a standing ovation.
They tried to arrange some particularly bloody marketing for the picture, but in fact, the hell of the artist Botticelli, completely written off to the smallest detail, with all his circles, will still remain before your eyes.
As Trier himself says, "the film - it should be like a pebble in your shoe."
That is, to bother all the time.
And here's a strange thing - personally Lars von Trier is not a gloomy monster at all.
He loves to laugh, actors love him (except for the stuffed Bjork, who in her delirium imagined that he verbally and physically abused her).
He looks like a cunning Danish peasant who raises a chicken and a pig and walks naked on a sandy beach on Sundays.
With f ** k tattooed on my fingers
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.