Lars von Trier x 6
(1993)
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The
Danish director Lar von Trier isn't a 'nice' director, he dosen't make
wholesome, easily understood films, but cinematic extravagances that defy you
to be indifferent to their contusions. Born in 1956, he studied film theory
before going on to learn its practice at the Danish Film School, where, with
his first two shorts, _Nocturne_ and _Images of a Relief_, he carved out a
colour-thick, fluid style that marked him as a filmmaker to be watched.
_Element of Crime_ shocked many critics out of their slumber, and raised an
expectation that was to test _Epidemic_ and _Medea_, before _Europa_ came
along to dazzle all. _Variety_ has named him 'undoubtedly Scandinavia's most
experimentally daring and technically most dazzling filmmaker', while the
_Financial Times_ finds in his films 'enough fresh stylistic ideas to keep
European cinema going until the next ice age'. His next film, _Breaking the
Waves_, is to be an 'erotic melodrama', while a larger work, _Dimension_, will
be the sum of shooting just three minutes per year until its premiere in
2024. What
von Trier does is invest his cinematics with its own force and intention,
making the screen think as we watch it. No camera movement is unintended, no
wash of colour arbitrary, no focusing or framing unthought. This is allied
with a love of dreamy narrative, his cinematics made conscious but never
completely understandable in their result; von Trier finds it perverse
'having all these films presenting coherent arguments, when life, the world
and dreams, none of them make sense . . . passion, please, not blandness . .
. religion not logic. Not everything belongs to a system, there's no need to
put everything into boxes'. His shooting scripts, though, are meticulously
constructed, with every camera movement and cut worked out in advance. He
writes listening to music, usually Wagner, and even shoots with it playing to
the actors so as to create the right atmosphere. 'I firmly believe that films
are about making films' he says, and that the experience should be 'childlike
and pure as true art'. His
abundant cinematic references (and it matters little if you spot them or not)
are not part of some juvenile postmodernist tinkling, but an indication of
how aesthetically far previous masters had got, such that von Trier's
thoughtful cinematics should be seen on the same trajectory -- impressive
*and* important. For each film I shall be attempting a short 'filmosophy'
(and how do we move on in film talk if we don't try out new words -- how
would cinema go forward if it didn't try out new images), an attempt to make
the experience of his films resonate by talking about the cinematic tools
that make his open eyed dreams impress. _Nocturne_
(1980) In the
early hours of the morning a woman, sensitive to light, and living in virtual
darkness, talks over the phone to another woman about her flight out of the
city. _Nocturne_
already shows an engagement in attempting to make film think. Its opening image
gives us the woman's fear -- 'I'm so scared of all that can be hidden in the
light'. And, as a whole, the film subtly shows a visual feeling for her
condition. Most importantly are the colours that the film thinks -- a sleepy
blueness only punctured by a stark red bulb, a cool grey to her memory, and a
dawn brown for her 'escape'. The film understands her eyes as well, shooting
in to her retina as soon as she awakes to be blinded by what light there is,
but also in the close focusing and slow movements. But most beautifully it
takes her confused mind and gives us its hazy associations -- the dripping
bottle and her tears, the bird song, and the empty bird cage. The film
follows her eyes up to the city, and then from the rooftops to her place of
departure -- a metaphorical departure, and a different kind of flight. _Images
of a Relief_ (1982) Copenhagen,
1945, and a German officer, held by the Danish resistance, escapes to look up
a woman he knows. At the
beginning of _Images of a Relief_ we are introduced to a man whose eyes have
been burnt by the madness he has seen. The film knows this and swathes our
vision in a deep hot red, the colour of fire, of blood, of a mind scorched
with violence. His memory of birds may be cool, and sweet in their sound (as
the film thinks them), but the capture of war criminals goes on. (The film
even seems to trace a complete Germany within the prison, ending in
'Dresden', and death.) The film moves into his eyes, and then gives us the
route of the mental grip the prison exerts -- right into the back of his
head. The madness is shown hot, and slowed, as though everlasting in the mind
of Leo -- the film shows us the (ocular) depth of suffering that leads to
suicide by gun (or fire). The film feels Leo's perceptions, of the boy's
buttons, of water dripping (like torture), of time burning away. It is only
after he finds his gun empty that he removes his glasses -- that he sees what
he must escape. Inside
Esther's house the film finds him a calmer golden green, sitting on the
floor, stroking her cat Massada. The film continues to find what he sees,
pulling back to the record player, down to the light from the doorway, up to
the returning lovers, before catching the light from the chandelier or from
the glass on the ceiling. But with Esther's accusations the film moves with
her, before ushering up images of female criminals. By now Leo is imagining
far ahead in the glint from a shard of glass, and Esther is suggesting their
escape by car, which the film montages with another car being trapped by
angry crowds. Leo
awakes in the forest, fresher, brighter, and his memory finds an natural path
to his childhood as the film itself moves smoothly *backwards* (right to
left) in and out of the trees. He takes off his glasses and we float up to
the trees, following his bird-song. His sight has virtually been cleansed (to
match his bird thoughts), but Esther finds his eyes irreparably damaged, and
the film rocks back and forth before her final solution -- and the film moves
calmly off to the right. He screams out his 'stored' up sights, and the film
lifts him to the height of his memories -- only the sorrow of Esther is left
to plead for our understanding of her deed. _The
Element of Crime_ (1984) Under
hypnosis in Cairo because of disturbing headaches, police detective Fisher
recalls a murder investigation in a flooded Europe. Someone has been killing
the young girls who sell lottery tickets, and Fisher visits his old teacher,
Osbourne, whose book 'The Element of Crime', influenced his own detection
methods. Just
what are the rules of that state under hypnosis? _The Element of Crime_ leads
us through one such state of a man called Fisher, and shows us that there are
none. In being the thought of a man -- a trapped animal -- caught in his own
system of thought, the film thinks its/his own world. Feeling the route of
memory -- linking images together (fire in a picture/fire in a stove),
overlapping thoughts (Osbourne, the car windscreen, the burning car), and
using fluid movements to reflect hypnotic associations. It is true this world
cannot be explained, boxed off, but it can be interesting to try to feel its
thinking once more -- out of the cinema, maybe while sipping a beer. As
Fisher *returns* to Europe, the film too seems to recede, underwater, moving
down and back to a rotting horse's head. Thus _The Element of Crime_ thinks
not only Fisher's memory, but also a beyond point of interpretation of that
memory, knowing more than Fisher can yet think himself. His guilt. For Fisher
the film provides a reliving that is suitably hazy -- not all is recognisable
at once, but dark, itself receding into the background. The skin of the image
is jaune(diced), thought by the film in concert with Fisher's obstructed and
disordered v(i/er)sion of criminal events. A colour to the events that Fisher
can't keep from rising to the surface (is it any wonder that the film only
shows us Fisher viewing himself in dirty puddles, or tarnished mirrors).
Puncturing this pallidness are lights from elsewhere: television, surgery
lamps, flashing police lights, fresh blue 'bulbs' sprouting from a piece of
rare dry earth; and hot Cairo is thought in cool blue and greys (as is a
church half way through). At
points it thinks *with* Fisher, such as when he spots the 'tailing report'
amongst the child's drawings, darting in as his mind, or feeling Fisher's
mental torture and spinning with his state. But also with Kim, at the Hotel,
feeling her pain, and dropping through the floor. From floor to top shelf,
from beneath water to the top of cranes, the film glides -- a thinking freed
to feel the depth and the highs of dreaming, and the dangers of plunging from
one to the other. But the
film decides things for itself -- at Osbourne's it moves languorously about,
heading for various vents, and holes that breath in wind from outside, an
outside that Osbourne only finds time to shoot at -- a reality (beyond
theory) that has scuppered him, and will too Fisher. When the film returns to
the horse's head it has slowed down to take in the blood streaming out of it
-- the same important slowed thought that gives us the horse strung overhead,
dripping with a drowned Europe, and the power in withdrawing from Kim and the
kid as they both end up breaking windows trying to escape Fisher (to reality
-- beyond his system?). As the
realisation for Fisher closes in, so the film drops down again, to the sewer,
and again slows in his orgasmic ride with Kim. The film only gives us
multiple views of Fisher, together with a blood red bulb, when he gains the
knowledge he wasn't looking for -- that Kim had a child by Harry Grey.
(Following this the film understands his need to escape with existential
speed.) But Fisher follows the system that caused Osbourne to kill, and only
with that final realisation does the film really feel his breakdown --
unsettled (pulling close and slowing a smashed bottle), shaking and
uncertain, wanting to finally wake up. Fisher
is tied to a system which inherently prescribes that full understanding *is*
possible. A parallel thought: we are ourselves part of a language system that
leads us to believe in the possibility of metaphysical truths (with Osbourne
on the television lecturing, we hear the accusing words 'understanding',
'metaphysic'). And yet the only way to escape that system is via it. Escaping
'conventional' filmmaking is not a matter of experimental anarchism, but of
re-infusing our old codes with new concepts, new images, cuts, sounds and
movements. Not anything like the clashing and parodying of genres that
postmodernism would offer us, but a phenomenological rejuvenation of our own
experiences via this new, thoughtful, use of cinema. The Hero of _The Element
of Crime_ is the Fisher in the river of promised truth -- of a final reason
that turns out to be a sort of bloodied mirror; no wonder he arrived in Cairo
with a bloody headache. _Epidemic_
(1987) A film
director and a writer research and discuss a new project, 'Epidemic', in
which a mysterious illness is spread throughout the world. In the mind
of the artist a film can be made. In the mind of our director a film was
thought -- _Epidemic_. The thought was stamped on the image as soon as it was
typed -- there was never any going back. _Epidemic_ as a whole realises both
the hard, shaky, contrasty work of the two filmmakers, and the smooth flowing
work-in-progress 'dreamed' by the film for them. The director and the writer
become carriers -- of the film, of its attendant disease. Comic, horrific,
corny, but always heroic -- the film takes shape as a fatal coincidence: the
writing of the script (the thinking of the film), and the real outbreak of
the disease in the lives of the creators. In the
tale of Dr Mesmer the film moves gracefully, perfectly, almost too carefully
-- over the fateful dinner table, in the doctors' bunker, over the long
grass, above the water. The dream of the filmmakers is shown in long diffused
shots, uncut thoughts, and completely idealistic action, culminating in the
hero's escape from the cave so as to thank God! The hypnotist
arrives, as does the 'film', moving in on the table like a predator. The
creators laugh off the attempt of the hypnotist to take the girl into the
film, but, when she does, they all enter too. And we can enter film if we are
in the right state -- open and receptive. And film can take us in, can be
hypnotic -- and it only took a bet, and a mischievous, at best pathetic film
to tell us this. _Medea_
(1988) Jason
built his vessel Argo and sailed to Colchis to fetch the Golden Fleece which
he won with the help of Medea, the beautiful and wise who gave him her love.
Her love has now turned to hatred. Jason betrays Medea and the two sons she
has borne him. Together they fled from Colchis, and after a perilous journey
landed in Corinth as outlaws. Medea left her distant country. Jason left her
here. We
watch _Medea_ as though through gauze, turning all colours hazy and dark --
browns, greys, blacks -- a world thought dour and separate, where all
silences are dramatic. The film is almost wholly thought *for* Medea, her
intake of breath at the beginning lifts the film which then spins with her
turmoil. It pulls in as her hands grip the wet sand, and finally goes under
as she does. Later, as Medea talks of her revenge, the film simultaneously
moves in on her children, thinking her concern, and, later, silently glides
in behind Creon on the marsh, mimicking her mysterious power. The film also
understands her single-minded desire for revenge, moving close as she makes
the poison and smears it on the bridal crown. In her
attempt to deceive Jason on the beach, the film feels her power head-on,
separating her from the blue sky, divorcing Jason from the dunes into his own
thoughts -- his breathing loud in the film's 'ears' -- and finally upending
the sand and sky for his temporary seduction. But it is he who 'wakes' first,
while she remains apart, and his realisation slaps her back to her only
option, the poisoned crown. Even as he leaves with her present the film
notices his steps in the sand, like those, later, of the dying horse. When
Medea leaves however, the film feels her presence and pulls back to picture
her against wide full skies and sand strewn plains. The
film also gives us a sense that Medea knows what her deeds have resulted in,
showing her pulling her children on a cart, while Creon dies in agony
'behind' her, a death that is replaced (in her mind?) by the tree on which
she will kill her sons. But the
film also gives us hints of others' emotions: putting fire into the head of
Glauce with her desire to see Medea exiled; pulling close Creon's nervous
breath as he searches for her (whilst her voice is ever deep and near, as
though it is she who hears him so well); and, finally, the violent wind that
travels with Jason as he searches for Medea, the slow merge of tree and
Jason's face as he finds his dead sons, and the high eye on his eventual
collapse among the swirling sea of grass. _Medea_ ends as it began, waiting
for the tide; but this time Medea is not submerged, but lifted. _Europa_
(US: _Zentropa_) (1991) A young
American of German parentage arrives in Germany at the end of the war to work
on his uncle's railway, and is confronted by still active Nazi partisans. From
the beginning the *film* itself is in full control, its voice intoning the
hero's 'hypnosis', as well as our mode of attention: 'open, relaxed, and
receptive'. Naivety, innocence, eyes oiled and free of diversions. Warmth . .
. deeper . . . sink. This is a film that knows what it's doing, knows its
characters, understands their concerns. It is a dream that thinks. It's
almost continually flowing movements on the one hand reflect the hypnotic
state, where nothing jars and associations come freely, but also works to
think, link, the film's events: Leo and Katrinna mess up the model railway,
and the film moves down through the floor (anything goes in the mind of film)
to where Max eventually cuts himself to death -- the film shows us Katrinna
controlling one situation, while it knows she engineered the other -- as we
discover later, sending anonymous letters to her father. And, to top it off,
a calm 'knowing' movement from the ruined model to the Zentropa itself. The
film will spin above Leo when he is not so confident or in control -- his
first night at the train barracks, or surrounded by passengers on the
platform. It also circles him at his first meeting with the Hartmanns, and
then slows and moves towards him as he becomes more involved. Later, dizzy
from running after the train, the film almost keels Leo over itself. The film
directs attention with simple lighting, say, picking out Katrinna on the
train set, uncle Kessler in the car, or Leo in the funeral crowd -- all
directing our attention, like a dream that knows its points of reference. It
will match grand gestures, the roofless church, the coffin in the train, with
*how* it thinks them: high and dramatic. The
depth of the film, its complete World and Life ('a miraculous surge of life')
and Brain, is most beautifully realised when the concentration and attention
of the characters is thought by the film. Early on, when Leo is listening to
his uncle, the setting of the train yard is seen subtlely divorced, faded and
distant -- the instructions of his masters taking up the whole of his
concentration. The first use of colour occurs when the film thinks Leo's
idealistic reaction to the sight of Zentropa's cars (being pulled by children
he can't as yet see). And this layered thinking by the film unsettles our
brain, as though we were seeing through two sets of eyes at once -- and this
is what the film does (and should be doing), *letting us view what ordinarily
we just physically couldn't*, the narrow *with* the expanse, catching detail
*along* with a wider scene. Colour
is then introduced in what will become a gorgeous rhythm of images throughout
the film between Leo and Katrinna. When Leo sees her on the train the film
shows his feeling of her with soft, dark colours. With her then taking him in
the film reverses the effect (the thought) and he almost appears as one big
blush, being both infused with the colour he 'caught' from her, and in being
coloured by the film thinking *her* attention this time. The film then brings
them both into colour against a faded grey compartment, before Leo again
takes up his role of gazer in that background. Also later, when he sees her
from a car, he 'catches' or receives her colour as the film cuts between
them. As a
kind of cinematic-brain the film can take *any* thoughts of or by the
characters and bring them into relief: a tiny Leo taken over by the meaning
of *Werewolf*; his non-blinking eyes giving away his thoughts of the
inexorable journey of the train along its pre-laid tracks that lead deeper,
deeper into Germany; the list that the Jew is reading in front of Max; the
communication cord *ahead* of Leo's decision to use it; Katrinna's face, just
married, large and still mysterious to her husband; the bomb timer, large in
the mind of Leo; his passive eyes across which he storms firing a gun; and
finally, the collage of chattering faces, the causes of his downfall, that
the film gives us just as Leo sinks deeper into his watery grave. This is,
above anything else, an interpretation of what cinema can *be. Not merely
talking heads, but thinking images. The
film thinks for all though, it can *colour* that which is important; the
bullet that drops to the floor, *for* the Werewolf kid; the kid in turn,
*for* the old man (the kid who safely divorces the old man into a large
greying head -- such that it becomes only a 'target' that he has been ordered
to shoot), the old man's blood for us, and the younger boy for the soldiers.
Leo too is realising things, about innocence and involvement, and the film
reddens him thus so. Also the death of Lawrence; the bomb package; the
lovers' parting hands, all decided by the film to be relieved of their grey
origins and brought closer to our minds. For Max
the questionnaire is not simply black and white, and the Jew's list no small
matter. In his bath, about to shave, the razor takes precedence, and, from
below, blood could never have been brighter. And then, in full colour, the
bathroom, like the moment when Leo discovers Katrinna to be a Werewolf,
thinking the full impression made on all. All
films think, but not any as startlingly as _Europa_. What this thoughtfulness
does to its many subjects: our new Europe, Nazism, the American involvement
after WW2, tainted innocence, is really just whatever kind of knowledge you
have felt is worth taking away from the film. What *is* for sure is that its
World of thoughtful cinematics puts others to shame, creating a blisteringly
hot experience, brought off with the surest of w(i/a)nks by a director called
Lars von Trier. British
Film Institute and Birkbeck College, London June
1993 Copyright
© Daniel Frampton 1993 Daniel
Frampton, 'Lars von Trier x 6', _Filmosophy_, June 1993
<http://www.filmosophy.org/articles/vontrier>. NB.
Sections of this piece were included in the 1996 article: Filmosophy: Colour. |
Comments & Questions: author@filmosophy.org
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