A friend of mine, uh, happened upon a screener of this movie last week.
Wow.
Now that I’ve had a little time to recover, I’ll field questions. To which I will probably have no answers. I mean, wow. Very complex psychology, as per usual; desperately violent misanthropy, as per usual; you’re left feeling, well, raped in the face, as it were. But dang the dude can make a movie. Oddly enough, for a film that’s basically a treatise on the darkest depths of the human capacity for inhumanity, it’s dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky. I think this is a reference to how important nature is in the film–and in the work of Tarkovsky–as a backdrop as well as an encompassing metaphor, as a physical presence and a grounding reality that’s as central to the narrative as an character. But needless to say, nature has two different meanings for the two different directors.
Anyone else seen it? Any thoughts on the title? The only theories I can come up with are pretty abstract; there’s no direct reference in the film.
Anyone read Ebert’s blog entries–multiple–on this? The disc is circulating; Scarecrow Video in Seattle has a PAL version on the shelves. And I guess it’s starting to show up on screens in NY and such cultural-elitist centers.
I haven’t seen it and, I have to admit, I don’t know whether I have the stomach to do so. I know it made a real splash at the Toronto Film Festival but reports of its brutal sexual violence don’t really inspire me to run out and see it.
I have a real love/hate relationship with Von Trier. I think he’s a brilliant filmmaker and I have nothing but respect for his willingness to take big risks in exploring the dark side of humanity but I always feel like I need to take a shower after watching one of his films. In fact, I finally had to call it quits after “Dogville”. That movie beat me into submission and I’ve refused to watch anything he’s done ever since.
Having said that, I have to admit I’m intrigued by one of its themes, that namby-pamby new age “therapy” can do more harm than good. This hits close to home for me since I’ve watched one of my own family members suffer through just such ineffective therapy before he finally found effective psychiatric treatment for his PTSD.
So my question is this: Is this theme explored coherently throughout the movie is it merely a starting point for the ensuing violent sexual politics.
It’s Von Trier, Jake. It’s merely a starting point. Actually it’s more of a metaphor. Still, the film calls into question the validity of codified “grief counseling,” although that is certainly not its central agenda.
