Over the course of a handful of films, Danish director Lars von Trier has managed to polarize both audiences and critics. His spooky TV series The Kingdom (1994 and 1997) and Scottish-set drama Breaking the Waves (1996) were hailed as masterpieces, while The Idiots (1998) encountered censorship problems and a flurry of dismissive reviews. Dancer in the Dark (2000), his musical starring Icelandic songstress Bjork, may have won best film and best actress awards at Cannes but, when released in the UK, cinemas notoriously offered viewers their money back if they walked out within the first half hour.
So is he a genius or charlatan? One thing is true: he is certainly the main reason Danish film is enjoying its current renaissance. His Dogma manifesto (which pared filmmaking down to little more than a camera and actors) and production house Zentropa were responsible for titles that took the world by storm. His own The Idiots and fellow Dogma director Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration both premiered in competition at Cannes in 1998, with Vinterberg's movie subsequently receiving a Golden Globe nomination. The next year, Soren Kraugh-Jacobsen's Mifune won a Silver Bear at Berlin. Beyond Dogma, Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher (1996) became a cult hit and Ole Bornedal's Nightwatch (1994) was turned into a Hollywood remake. All of sudden, Denmark was on the film afficionado's map. And von Trier's influence extends beyond film: both series of The Kingdom were released theatrically around the world and as recently as November 2002 Danish TV drama Travel Team became the first Danish program to win a Best Drama Series International Emmy, proving Danish TV is also enjoying international recognition.
There is certainly enough to warrant this study of von Trier, one in the World Directors series from the BFI. But this is no general introduction, as author Jack Stevenson makes certain assumptions of his reader. You are expected to know the Dogma manifesto and what it was about (nowhere in the book is it outlined), while occasionally references are made to actors and films by name only, without elaborating or placing them in context.
Stevenson notes that von Trier's influence is felt "more from a business and idea perspective than from an aesthetic perspective", and while von Trier has shown Danish film-makers that they can have global ambitions (Thomas Vinterberg recently shot It's All About Love with Claire Danes, Joaquin Phoenix and Sean Penn; Nicolas Winding Refn has now signed John Turturro to his next project, Fear-X), it is notable that Stevenson shies away from any kind of discussion of von Trier's style or artistry.
What he does instead is place the director firmly in his context. It's enjoyable and informative and, if you can overcome Stevenson's slightly archaic tone, entertaining and full of gossipy details. It's wonderful to read about von Trier's various paranoia, how his second feature, Epidemic (1987) was the result of a bet with his producer, how he called Roman Polanski (then president of the Cannes jury) a midget and how producer Aalbaek Jensen leaped naked into a swimming pool when Dancer in the Dark won its awards at Cannes. But, tackling the work in chronological order, Stevenson largely focuses on the nuts of bolts of von Trier's career, on the logistics of making a film and its critical reception. The film-maker, with all his eccentricities (he filmed The Kingdom on location in a real hospital but a morbid fear of the place kept him secluded in a separate room, communicating with his AD via a walkie-talkie; a phobia of travel meant he could only travel to Cannes under duress in a campervan) is undoubtedly a difficult character. But in elaborating this, Stevenson delves unnecessarily into the political in-fighting of the Danish film industry, detailing far too many petty local squabbles. The end result is that Lars von Trier is more of a production biography than a serious discussion of the director's artistry.
Reviewed by Monika Maurer
