The Idiots (1998)
Directed by Lars von Trier
A group of people gather at a Copenhagen suburban home to break all the limitations and to bring out the 'inner idiot' in themselves.
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What critics compared The Idiots to
More heavy-handed than Lukas Moodysson’s similarly themed Together , less abrasively confrontational than The Idiots by fellow Dogme 95 signatory Lars von Trier , The Commune is slightly melodramatic in its exploration of the emotional fallout when an experiment in collective living coincides with the breakdown of a marriage.
Von Trier’s “Golden Heart” trilogy—starting with Breaking the Waves in 1996 and continuing with The Idiots in 1998 and the musical Dancer in the Dark in 2000—derives its title from the saintly women each film centers on.
I told him how much I liked Anti-Christ and Melancholia , while also confessing that I absolutely hated The Idiots.
Not surprisingly, the experiment has been most effective in dramas about personal and group erosion: Lars von Trier encouraged inappropriate behavior in ''The Idiots''; Thomas Vinterberg dissected family dysfunction in ''The Celebration.''
The first three filmmakers have delivered their films, The Celebration (Vinterberg), The Idiots (Von Trier), and Mifune (Kragh-Jacobsen), and now the fourth, Levring's The King Is Alive, arrives in theaters.
To qualify as a Dogme film writer/director Scherfig follows the Dogme Manifesto “Vow of Chastity” championed by Lars von Trier (The Idiots) by using a hand held camera for shooting the color film on location without special lighting, music, or subsequent sound dubbing.
If the existing constellation of Danish vérité exercises could be imagined, for a moment, as Snow White's dwarves, Thomas Vinterberg's inaugural entry, 1998's The Celebration , would probably be Grumpy, Lars von Trier's spastic The Idiots would be Sneezy, and Kristian Levring's torpid The King Is Alive , in effect if not in ambition, would be Sleepy.
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(The film is Lars von Trier's The Idiots directed by, well, you know.)
Indeed, von Trier's The Idiots and the Carrey vehicle Me, Myself & Irene are blatantly incorrect odes to the cathartic virtues of acting the fool.
The films of Lars von Trier, the brilliant, bellicose Danish director of The Idiots, Breaking the Waves and Dogville, aspires to the condition of exquisite, immersive poetry that is, to be felt, rather than questioned, analyzed, critiqued.
Von Trier loves to provoke, as we've seen from such previous films as "Breaking the Waves""The Idiots" and the musical "Dancer in the Dark," with Bjork and Catherine Deneuve.
In contrast to the stark Brechtian theatrical stylings of Manderlay (2005) and Dogville (2003), or the raw naturalism of The Idiots (1998), Antichrist is a visually lavish film for Von Trier.
Sure, von Trier has shown glimmers of humor in some of his previous films, mostly of the dark and twisted variety; you have to go all the way back to 1998’s “The Idiots,” or even some scattered moments of “Breaking the Waves” or “Dancer in the Dark.”
In his distinctive career, with films such as The Idiots (1998), Dogville (2003) and Melancholia (2011) he pushes boundaries and buttons and breaks rules and new ground.
Yet the most potent streak of autobiography can be found in his 1998 film The Idiots , the second and strongest Dogme 95 production.
Throughout, the consummate agent provoc-auteur remains torn between an angsty interest in self-obliteration and an adolescent obsession with the illusory mechanics of hardcore – a fetish that dates back to the days of The Idiots , and which has made porn doubles and prosthetic genitals a recurrent element of his arthouse palette.
In the nearly two decades since von Trier unveiled the Dogma 95 manifesto, his work has become increasingly provocative, from integrating real sex in “The Idiots” to figuratively shaking his fist at God with “Antichrist.”
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In his distinctive career, with films such as The Idiots (1998), Dogville (2003) and Melancholia (2011) he pushes boundaries and buttons and breaks rules and new ground.
Throughout, the consummate agent provoc-auteur remains torn between an angsty interest in self-obliteration and an adolescent obsession with the illusory mechanics of hardcore – a fetish that dates back to the days of The Idiots , and which has made porn doubles and prosthetic genitals a recurrent element of his arthouse palette.
The narrative model – like his so-called Golden Heart trilogy (Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark) – is deliberately old-fashioned.
Long-time Lars-lovers will recognise the raw, frisky experimentation of The Idiots and the sexual adventuring of Breaking The Waves in this undeniable demanding pair of movies.
But in films like The Idiots , Dancer in the Dark and Dogville, the joke was always aimed at something grand, important, even unassailable.
His last four movies ( "Breaking the Waves," "The Idiots," "Dancer in the Dark" and now "Dogville") have all dealt largely with the psychological (and sometimes physical) torture of vulnerable female protagonists.
Experience of his recent work - Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark - suggests he has an instinct for getting up people's noses but remains clueless (or perhaps careless) about pleasing the eye or the ear.
No discussion of Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, or Dogville--the three of which we'll collectively call the "Martyr Trilogy" (von Trier has his own, ludicrous umbrella term for Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, and the intervening The Idiots--the "Good-Heart Trilogy"--and insists that Dogville is part one of a proposed "American" trilogy (Manderlay, the unlikely sequel, will deal with "slavery"))--is complete without citing Dreyer's 1928 silent The Passion of Joan of Arc as a primary influence.
The proof was in the plodding: Although there have been a few genuinely absorbing and entertaining Dogme movies ("The Celebration" and "Italian for Beginners" leap to mind), most of them, including von Trier's own tiresome exercise "The Idiots," have been little more than pretentious, self-conscious film-school essays that have received publicity not because of any inherent interest or artistry but because their directors have usually accompanied their releases with tortured mea culpas about the vows that they broke, such as pulling back a curtain to increase a room's light.