And all of this from Cannes despite his being briefly banned and labelled “persona non grata” after a 2011 press conference promoting Melancholia got out of hand. It’s the women I identify with in all my films.”Īmong his many accolades, von Trier has received the Palme d’Or (for Dancer in the Dark), the Grand Prix (for Breaking the Waves), the Prix du Jury (for Europa), and the Technical Grand Prize (for The Element of Crime and Europa) at the Cannes Film Festival. “The male protagonists in my films are basically all idiots who don’t understand shit,” says von Trier, adding: “Whereas the women are much more human, and much more real. This internationally acknowledged movement involved the “Dogme 95 Manifesto” and the “Vows of Chastity” were meant to emphasize traditional storytelling devices while eschewing elaborate special effects or technology, and is still practiced by filmmakers to this day, though von Trier himself has largely left it behind since the 90s.Īpart from his often brutal and burning approach to controversial subject matter, von Trier’s films consistently present strong female leads, and his female-centric films are often compared to other great European filmmakers like Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman for this very reason. Because of his often bold and spurring modus operandi, von Trier courts controversy with almost every new film he actualizes.Īs an auteur-director, von Trier has inspired many of his peers via his financial independence and total creative control over his many projects, all made through his production company Zentropa Entertainment, which he founded in 1992 with producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen.Ī key architect along with fellow Danish filmmakers Thomas Vinterberg––and to a lesser but still considerable extent Søren Kragh-Jacobsen and Kristian Levring––they concocted the cinematic movement called Dogme 95. Von Trier is also identified with his often adversarial approach to studying and scrutinizing themes of existentialism, sociopolitical issues, mental health intellection, as well as spirituality and faith traditions. The Danish born firebrand is recognized, even by his detractors, for his numerous technical innovations, his willingness to experiment, and his fondness for upending genre conventions. But whatever it’s really about, since none of the events can be taken at surface, very bad things certainly do happen…very, very, bad things.Confrontational provocateur Lars von Trier has, over a prolific filmmaking career now bridging nearly four decades, amassed an admirable, distinct, powerful, and frequently polarizing body of work. Or it might be a nightmarish romp through Von Trier’s battle with depression, anxiety, and childhood trauma, and that un-resolved mommy issues are also bad - very bad. Antichrist is a symbolist romp whose crux might be that Christianity, mythology, and psychology are the afterbirth of nature and that nature is bad - very bad. And if concrete answers are important to you as a film goer, then avoid this like an adaptation of Gertrude Stein by David Lynch, because you won’t find any. This is Von Trier’s world, and just how seriously we‘re supposed to take things is something we’re never going to get a concrete answer on. But while the images are breathtaking, the content is often cheesy, overwrought, and borders on parody.
It has a video-game-like clarity that pushes digital to a place celluloid snobs never dreamed it could breach. Every frame in the destined-to-be-debated Antichrist might sever audience reactions more precisely than its notorious scissor wielding sequence, but there is no denying its visual appeal. The opening sequence of Antichrist is an oscillation between, “oh, isn’t this lovely” and, “oh c’mon, give me a break.” In many ways, it’s a fractal for the remainder of the picture, as well as Lars Von Trier‘s entire career to date.
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