Is Lars Von Trier an innovator, or just a clever

In the wake of world events that only remind us how fiction is ahead of history, and after re-watching Dogville... I wondered if, before falling into sinuous, almost swampy depths, Von Trier had not concocted a work of art where the music, the staging (which pays homage to and parodies the American playwright Thornton Wiler at the same time) and the plot are not used to reveal a lie, as Nietzsche himself had advocated.

Did Von Trier manage to create a synopsis with this film between his early experimentation and the iconoclastic maelstrom (where he left the audience in its wake) of the ending?
Despite being indebted to certain codes of the '60s and '70s, the film, in my opinion, contributes new elements that elevate it to the category of "new classic," one that pricks at the nerves, like true classics. The philosophy of the hammer.

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Edited by Fercandio46 - April 11 2025 at 00:49

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Edited by Lewian - April 11 2025 at 15:38

I didn't like the latter either, and I agree that there are many provocateurs who speculate, and nothing more. I also think that the film Europa was a pivot, a turning point. But in a filmography that boasts so many achievements, not only aesthetic but also thematic, one can also accuse him of excess, like so many authors of the 1970s. Bergman also had problems with censorship when he made A Summer with Monica and The Silence, as did Sam Peckinpah, which is why many of his films ended up being independent. But returning to Dogville, its content is not only political but also philosophical. One of its protagonists has doubts that even lead him to question his own passive behavior, or his ability to modify it, displaying a certain...gratuitous lucidity, we could say. And that's not seen very often. Anyway...this doesn't seem like a propitious time for auteur cinema.

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Fercandio46 wrote: ... But returning to Dogville, its is not only political but also philosophical. One of its protagonists has doubts that even lead him to question his own passive , or his ability to modify it, displaying a certain...gratuitous lucidity, we could say. ...

Hi,

Sure, however, we can say the same thing about Pasolini ... and all of a sudden ... it's like we're caught in a web ... of something or other.

Fercandio46 wrote: ... as did Sam Peckinpah, which is why many of his films ended up being independent. ...

I find the whole thing about Peckinpah a bit off kilter ... and it makes it look like the TV was not showing us the pictures from VietNam ... which were far more incendiary than Sam Peckinpah was ... and it is rather scary that we find that the ending of "The Wild Bunch" is insane ... it is a natural ending, and obviously one that the folks involved knew that they all would die, but make a point! And it goes back to the opening shot of the film, the kids playing with fire and burning the little animals.

Like is there a difference?

Fercandio46 wrote: ... But returning to Dogville, its content is not only political but also philosophical. One of its protagonists has doubts that even lead him to question his own passive behavior, or his ability to modify it, displaying a certain...gratuitous lucidity, we could say. ...

This is the hard part of cinema, and how to illustrate it as an art form in the 20th century.

For many years, it was the first time that anyone saw things from a completely different perspective, to the point that for many years, folks got scared seeing a train coming or a gun shooting at the camera ... and they left the theater a few times, but they stayed for the laughs!!!!!

After WW2, film in Europe took on a very different point of view, that was not exactly a commercial thing like it was in America that was doing fantasies and second rate crap that was "meaningful" as a way to sell a song, or get folks to go to the theater and see the blue scrim, or the rose scrim behind the actor, and the kiss ... which Europe's many film makers made fun of left and right, and people like Bergman did not like to film kisses! But you can tell that Truffaut and Godard had their fun with it!

What Lars Von Trier was doing, was not "new" ... and using video to make things look psychedelic, was already being done in America, and had shown up, of all places, in 200 Motels, the film by Frank Zappa, which is an incredible psychedelic experience in every way ... like no one has ever come close to in more than one sense, including the acting and words in the images.

But, part of the European emancipation, and the eventual breakdown of many countries, was their ability to be more political and fight for it, and it would be easy to think that Lars Von Trier, was fighting for some freedom, within film, though I tend to think, based on only 3 films (this could change as I see more of them!!!) that his thoughts was more for show, than it was a serious go.

I'm not sure that Lars Von Trier, fits amidst the best in Europe that stood up and made films at a time, when it was needed and they meant a lot more ... than when LVT did them ... but that's not to say that LVT did not have the time and place to use his ideas and thoughts ... I merely think/thought that he was just trying to add some more thoughtful content to the work he was working with, which at times might need this or that to make it stronger and better ... though looking at these things in retrospect is always very tough and difficult ... as times change and the ability of things to take place change right inside our visual landscape ... compare this to Picasso's Guernica and how a kid would see all kinds of pieces/parts of a dead person in their very own window ... a very scary thought, that really ends up having us not liking what the painting is really suggesting, which is horrendous, but it speaks for what happened in Europe in both WW's and in Spain during their Civil War in the 30's when even the government went after artists, writers, and theater folks to make sure they did not get famous, or got any publicity ... !!!

I'm not going to state the LVT is not an innovator, but I think he should be considered one of the folks that helped make us aware of a lot more than just a film for fun ... and in that sense, this is important, and where European film fits, specially after WW2 ... something that America completely rejected in Hollywood, and remember, that the powers that be in America, had started censoring everything, since Orson Welles scared the whole country and the FCC and regulations was created for radio and TV. Europe remained a bit more open to the artistic ideas ... and a War of the Worlds, would probably be more appreciated in Europe, and less of a fearful something else, after the destruction by the WW1.

It's part of film history, isn't it? After the First and Second World Wars, the winning side emerged stronger. Europe was in a state of exhaustion. The United States fared better economically. The era of the big studios arrived, along with a way of doing things that would only be questioned in the 1960s with the New Waves that swept across the world, beginning with the French Nouvelle Vague. I'm also more in tune with the European spirit and sensibility; not in vain am I from the land of Astor Piazzolla, Spinetta, and Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, a director whose work from the early 1950s foreshadowed the French Movida that was to come. (His father, Leopoldo Torres Ríos, also a director, produced a minimalist body of work that shares many points with Ozu.)

While a John Cassavetes emerged in the US, and the entire Scorsese generation grew up watching Italian and European cinema in general, as well as the paradox that the young critics of Cahiers magazine claimed for certain American directors—who in turn had been influenced by World War II expatriates like Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, and Ernst Lubitsch!—two of the most valuable and memorable moments in American cinema (the screwball comedy and film noir) are also partly due to Europe.

I'm not familiar with Gaspar Noe's filmography, although I knew him by name, so I'll have to dig deeper into it!

I remember Scorsese's first film, Who's That Knocking at My Door, which owed much to the Nouvelle Vague. It was a time of great exchange, with De Niro and Donald Sutherland in Bertolucci's Novecento, as well as Sutherland in Fellini's Casanova.
But indeed, the era of superheroes has me tired. Not to mention the remakes that are solely meant to make money, but they pervert them to the point of changing their entire meaning. Like Straw Dogs or Far from the Madding Crowd (although this one was made by Thomas Vinterberg, a former Dogme '95 director, and nothing remains of David Lean's great epic). I think the last innovation in the US was Charlie Kaufman's screenplays adapted into films, such as Human Nature, Being John Malkovich?, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Adaptation. I was surprised by a 2020 Canadian film called The Kid Detective, whose simulated development continues progressively until the end and serves the plot in a way that was unprecedented for me until now.