Nymph()maniac

There is something totally unforgettable about Joe’s story, which starts when she first discovered her ‘cunt’ at the age of two and a half years. Her story is addressed to Seligman, a strange lonely middle aged Jew that finds Joe lying beaten and bleeding in a dark alleyway at the rear of his flat. He takes the young women there to tend her wounds. Its while she is lying in bed recuperating she starts to tell him about her life that consists of a series of promiscuous sexual adventures. Nymph()maniac (2013) is Danish director Lars von Triers third and final film in his brilliant “Depression Trilogy” which was proceeded by Antichrist in 2009 and Melancholia in 2011.   

This new film ‘a bizarre exploration of sexuality in all its twisted glory’[1] is ingeniously divided into two volumes with five chapters in the first volume and three in the second. There is no real reason given as to why Joe is so sexually active from a very early age. Her normal loving relationship with her father gives no clues but at 12 years old she experiences an epileptic episode that transforms it self into a sexual occurrence. Her first real sexual experience is with Jerome to whom she gives up her virginity. This one event leads to compulsive sex with literately thousands of different men. Her appetite for even more intense experiences leads her to engage a professional sadist called K.  This is the only episode in the film that tends to make you want to look away - but you don’t!

A self diagnosed nymphomaniac, Joe’s explanation for her actions is that she must be a bad person, but she refuses to admit to Seligman that her sexually explicit existence is immoral and repudiates the idea of changing her life style, preferring her way of life to a life of hypocrisy.

The character of Joe is divided between newcomer Stacy Martin and von Trier regular Charlotte Gainsbourg (whose rendering of Hey Joe over the final credits is up there with the Hendrix version). Stellen Skarsgard plays Seligman, far more convincing than he was in The Railway Man (2013). Shia LaBeouf, looking a little lost at times plays the virginity snatching Jerome and the dominant S&M dispensing K is creepily portrayed by Jamie Bell.

 

The cast.

Not a film for everyone, but then none of this director’s films is to every body’s taste. It does not have the shock value of Antichrist but it does have an array of penis types, sadomasochism, oral and anal sex and threesomes! Skarsgard denies that the film is pornographic and says you would be hard pressed to find anything to masturbate over!  My honest opinion is that if, like me, you love von Triers contribution to the cinematic landscape then your going to love this film, or you could wait for the promised five and a half hour hard-core version!

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[1] James Mottram The List

Antichrist

The 53-year-old Danish film director Lars von Trier has been accused of many things including being a self-publicist and a misogynist. Antichrist (2009) is his most sincerely tormented work to date, written as a means of conquering his state of mind while he was going through a period of severe depression and mental turmoil! He has a fixation with female victimhood that runs through the three films I am familiar with, Breaking the Waves (1996) Dancer in the Dark (2000) and Dogville (2003). Known for being provocative he stated to a press conference at this 2009 Cannes Film Festival  ‘I am the best film director in the world shifting the boundaries of the film making, but still keeping within, the cinematic tradition’

Touted by its publicists as one of the most controversial films since A Clockwork Orange (1971), This latest film from von Trier has been attacked on all sides because of the nastiness of certain scenes. Opinions about the merits and demerits of Antichrist vary a great deal amongst the critics. Certain critics including Bryan Appleyard from the Sunday Times have created the outcry that von Trier was looking for, ‘to stir jaded sensibilities through shock in an age stunned by screen violence’. Controversy to one side we must not dissuade auteur’s like von Trier or in fact Tarantino from making unique work that attracts argument, discussion and in some ways the way we look at things. As veteran producer Tony Garnett’s recent widely circulated comments on the BBC drama hierarchy stated, ‘If you want to make dramatic fiction for the screen, you must first strangle your creative impulses’

 

'She'

Antichrist is to be experienced rather than understood, it tells a story of two characters ‘He’ (Willem Dafoe) and ‘She’ (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who, following an unthinkable tragedy, try to find a new meaning in life and in their life together. ‘He’ is a therapist, ‘She’ a scholar with an unfinished thesis on witch-hunting through the ages. The setting is a forest, a mental landscape as well as a physical one described as ‘a Satan Church where chaos reigns’ The story is made up of a Prologue and an Epilogue, with four chapters in between entitled Grief, Pain, Despair and The Tree Beggars.

Charlotte Gainsbourg jumped at the chance to play ‘She’ von Trier admitted that she proved to be absolute miracle in the film, hardly having to coach her as she was so well prepared. This movie would have been a great challenge to any actress but Gainsbough claimed she had a lot of hang-ups as an performer, including not being able to cry on screen, but she has since stated that this film had liberated her. It also gained her the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

 

'He'

A truly beautiful film, Antichrist is well acted by both Gainsbourg and Dafoe although it is a film to be appreciated rather than enjoyed. The prologue is one of the most poetic and terrifyingly beautiful sections of film. Shot in slow motion black and white, a married couple make passionate love in the bathroom of their fourth floor apartment. Their wee son Nic opens the gate of his cot; see’s his parents as he passes the open bathroom door, climbs on to a table beside an open window knocking over three figurines marked Grief, Pain and Despair. Its snowing as he falls from the window to his death accompanied by his woollen rabbit. The complete scene is in silence except for the aria from Handel’s pastoral opera Rinaldo. Yes some of the scenes are graphic, yes the subject matter is very strong, yes the film is hard to watch at times, but I’m glad was given the chance to see this truly amazing film. Only time will tell if this is von Trier’s masterpiece.

As I said previously interestingly the film divided the critics with such varying comments as: The film will haunt both your days as well as your dreams. The most shocking movie ever shown at Cannes. A grotesque masterpiece, unconventional. Profoundly serious, very personal. Peerless imagery of startling beauty, one of the most beautiful looking films ever made. Needlessly graphic.  I’ll leave the last word to Kim Newman film critic ‘Von Trier’s self-conscious arrogance is calculated to split audiences into extremist factions, but Antichrist delivers enough beauty, terror and wonder to qualify as the strangest and most original horror movie of the year’

(This ramble was originally written in September 2009 but never published. Since then von Trier has made two further films in what he calls his  “Depression Trilogy” Melancholia in 2011 and now Nymph()maniac (2013) which I will publish tomorrow).   

Melancholia.

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Following Lars von Triers Nazi gaffe at the Cannes Film Festival I suppose we should, by rights, boycott his work but that’s the equivalent of cutting your nose off to spite your face! How can you ignore the Danish filmmaker who can produce such movies as Breaking the Waves (1996), The Idiots (1998) Dancer in the Dark (2000), Dogville (2003) and of course Antichrist (2009) a truly haunting film that gave Charlotte Gainsbourg a Best Actress Award. Its terrifyingly beautiful prologue is one of the best opening sequences of any film since Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Shot in slow motion black and white, a married couple make passionate love in the bathroom of their fourth floor apartment. Their young son Nic opens the gate of his cot; see’s his parents as he passes the open bathroom door, climbs on to a table beside an open window knocking over three figurines marked Grief, Pain and Despair. Its snowing as he falls from the window to his death accompanied by his woollen rabbit. The complete scene is in silence except for the aria from Handel’s pastoral opera Rinaldo and now von Trier gives us another memorable imaginative opening piece.

Melancholia (2011), is probably the directors most ambitious mainstream feature film to date, it has a full seven minutes long opening sequence which includes a planet colliding with, and destroying earth. There are strange slowed down images that resemble holograms including Kirsten Dunst striding in her wedding dress with creepers dragging at her feet, Charlotte Gainsbourg carrying her son across a golf course that appears as a quagmire both against a nightscape gorgeously lit by the moon and the afore mentioned planet. The films narrative is divided into two sections each one dealing with one of two sisters, Justin played by Dunst and Clair portrayed by Gainsbourg. The first deals with Justin’s farcical wedding day and introduces us to her dysfunctional friends and family including her mother and father played by Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt. As the elaborate celebrations, organised by her sister, disintegrates Justin descends in an ever-deeper melancholic depression. The second segment focuses on Clair who along with her husband (Kiefer Sutherland) and their young son Leo (Cameron Spur) administers a very large Country House Hotel with full size golf coarse and some very luxurious grounds. Clair is forced to allow Justine to stay at their hotel when her sister’s mental state deteriorates; all the while the strange blue planet called Melancholia gets ever closer to earth, the same planet we see in the prologue. Strangely Justine deals with the impending catastrophe and the acceptance of death far better than her sister, declaring that life on earth is evil anyway!

Justin and Clair.

The most beautiful scene in this movie occurs in this section and involves Justin who goes out at night to take a closer look at the approaching planet, removes her clothes and lays on the bank a small stream, naked, this scene is so wonderfully lit with a tremendous blue glow, the true work of a cinematic genius.

This co-production between Denmark, Sweden and France is in English not von Trier’s native Danish and was shot on location in Vastra Gotaland Southern Sweden.

As with most of his work this hypnotic movie does not fit an American or British filmmaking template, more akin with the Ingmar Bergman’s school of filmmaking. David Thomson said in an article in the Guardian newspaper and I paraphrase, von Trier is here to trouble us, not to entertain us, and this latest offering does just that. It’s not a film you either like or dislike, it’s a film that you admire and marvel at. 

Melancholia.