Lars von Trier x 6

Lars von Trier x 6

(1993)

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 indicat 333m1212d ion 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