Lars von Trier

“Idioterne is the cinematic equivalent of a knife in your gut. The Idiots is altogether a complex, maddening, devastating, kaleidoscopic one-of-a-kind viewing experience.”Read More »

Summary: “The politics of slavery and the follies of nation-building highlight Danish director Lars von Trier’s thought-provoking follow-up to the director’s 2003 drama Dogville, featuring The Village’s Bryce Dallas Howard in the role originally played by Nicole Kidman, and shot in the same stage-bound style as its predecessor. Shortly after leaving Dogville, Grace (Howard) and her father (Willem Dafoe) wander into a gated Alabama community still operating under the tenants of slavery. Appalled to stumble across a brutal scene in which a white master is viciously lashing his slave (Isaach de Bankolé), Grace hastily intercedes and pleads with the abusive man to treat his workers with respect and dignity. When merciless matriarchal plantation owner Mam (Lauren Bacall) dies shortly thereafter, the remaining slaves, who have never tasted freedom and only known life under “Mam’s Law,” implore the sympathetic Grace to help ease their turbulent transition toward democratic rule, with disastrous results.” (All Movie Guide)Read More »

Boundary-pushing cinematic visionary Lars von Trier (Antichrist) returns with one of his most daring, masterfully provocative works yet. In five audacious episodes, failed architect and arch-sociopath Jack (Matt Dillon) recounts the elaborately orchestrated murders-each, as he views them, a towering work of art-that define his “career” as a serial killer. Mixing pitch black humor, transcendent surrealism, and renegade musings on everything from history to architecture to cinema, von Trier fashions a radical, blazingly personal inquiry into violence, art, and the twin acts of creation and destruction. With Uma Thurman, Riley Keough, and Bruno Ganz.Read More »

Lars von Trier submitted this film as part of his application to film school. Many of the aesthetic and thematic fetishes of his later feature length films (including the Dogme films and his more recent return to the ‘fantastic’ in Antichrist, Melancholia, and the forthcoming Nymph()maniac) are already evident here. The film, as its subtitle says, tells “part of the story of Victor Marse”, an artist (played by Lars himself). The only English language synopsis of this film that I’ve found is reproduced in this wiki and seems to be a poor translation of a summary written by a 12 year old. Consult it at your own peril!Read More »