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Dominance, control, Irony – reflections on the work of the Danish film director Lars von Trier

Aug 3, 2009 Uncategorized

Dominance, control, irony – Reflections on the work of the Danish film director Lars von Trier

  Hardly any of the current director invents himself and his films as radically over again, like Lars von Trier does. From the weight of his first work somnambulistic The Element of Crime (1984) on artificial artificiality of Europe (1991), the proximity to the object of naturalistic observation in Breaking The Waves (1996), the radical simplicity of Idiots (1998) to the theatrical production in Dogville (2003) there is hardly a cinematic style, and hardly a story that had not tried the director – which is then interpreted by many critics over again as an aesthetic indecision and moral indifference.

at all The director, who has renovated the cinema of the last twenty years than almost any other, again and again his love of trouble with the ladies and gentlemen of the writing guild. His eccentricity and the carefully manicured neuroses, such as the almost legendary flight and travel anxiety, but also of dealing with actors – especially actresses – who walk on the set is always on the verge of a nervous breakdown, further building blocks in the legend of the “villain “and” charlatan “Lars von Trier, as well as the almost constant criticism of the Women of the director. The trend for a martyr-like female figures, is to sacrifice themselves, due firstly to the great master Carl Theodor Dreyer, on the other hand, a clear indication of a train at the plant, which found little attention so far – the topic of dominance and control. (# )
For Lars von Trier’s film is a cinema of domination, at different levels: First, there are always the characters themselves have been mastered, often by a rigid social structure in which they live (in Breaking The Waves, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville), often by individuals that are on the fate of (Europe, Breaking The Waves) and sometimes by their own past (The Element of Crime) Second, it also reflects the theme of dominance again and again the relationship the filmmaker to his medium again. For here also makes Lars von Trier again, clear and with very different approaches, who is the Lord of history and a movie – the director.

Is no surprise that for his first three films’ The Element of Crime are Epidemic (1987) and Europe, which are clearly designed as a trilogy, hypnosis is the unifying factor. For the warrants to the hypnotist, hypnosis (also director), the absolute control of the hypnotized (the audience on the one hand and the characters of the story the other). Thus, The Element of Crime begins with the narrator, the policeman Fisher is put into a trance and in this state the film as a product of memory and tells suffered trauma. Also in Epidemic is hypnosis, which gives the story finally taken a decisive turn, which leaves out the fantasy of a disease after a bloody reality.

Is the most visible aspect of dominance in Europe, because here is find a authorial and authoritative narrator who turns out to be absolute ruler of the history of the actors and the audience he intended with his “countdown” beginning and end of the story to slow down its statements or accelerate the time to determine the space and turns of history If ever a tone and a narrative form, the dream of a director has expressed for absolute control, then the voice of Max von Sydow, speaks as von Trier’s alter ego, the terrifying words: “When I count to ten, you are dead” ( #)
It is true that the strategies of domination over time subtle and not as obvious as in these early films von Trier, but the intent is still the same. The nature of the actors working in Breaking The Waves, the rigid set of
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, indicated that only with chalk scenes in Dogville, they all serve to ensure control and to get his own work on the subject. In the new film, the joint work with his mentor, Jørgen Leth’s The Five Obstructions again the aspect of control and mastery of key importance, but this time less convoluted than before. Another new feature is that von Trier has brought himself now a professional colleague to the side and this task is, rules aufzwängt and puts obstacles in the path. This is no more and no less an exploration of the capacity for suffering of others, the director-alter-egos, and the increase in the meta-director – the ultimate control, so to speak. The subject of the inherent fear of losing control over one’s work is reflected precisely back into the film Lars von Trier, who hardly found its way into the cinemas – Epidemic in the year 1987. Here eludes the film, which is planning a young director (Lars von Trier playing himself!), His hands and penetrates like a disease in real life to destroy it and infect. It ends, as it has to end: with the death of the director. A confession, however, can not stand still without being immediately irony – the “dead” Lars von Trier at the end of the film raises his head and winks at the camera.

This is the end, as so often feel that the cinema of Lars von Trier an ironic play about power and control, but it is a GAME.

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dominance, control, irony – Reflections on the work of the Danish film director Lars von Trier