Tag: Dancer in the Dark

Guy’s top 50 of the decade: #1-10

And then there were ten.

Before I wrap up the list that I’ve trickled out over the last five days, I suppose I should write a few words on the decade that was. I entered the 2000s as a 16 year-old boy in Johannesburg who thought he knew a lot about movies. I left it as a 26 year-old man in London who knows a lot more than he did then — but realizes that he knows a lot less. There is still so much to see that I’ve barely touched upon — from this past decade alone.

Probably no filmgoing decade in my lifetime will be as crucial to me as the one that passed, in terms of the shift and growth in my sense of how to read (and write) film.

I may have already known that I loved movies, but in the 2000s I gained a sharper sense of how to love them, what I really respond to in a film — and the 50 titles gathered here (along with many, many others) helped fine-tune that notion.

With that kind of personal learning curve attached to the decade, it’s hard to stand back and judge how it might stack against previous ones; strong, weak or average, it’ll always feel like my decade. As I compiled the list, however, did arrive at the conclusion that it started better than it finished. Sheer mathematics supports this personal view — the top 10 films I’m about to reveal all landed in the decade’s first half, and I don’t think that’s merely down to the advantage of distance.

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January 6, 2010
REVIEW: “Antichrist” (***1/2)

Edinburgh International Film Festival

“I am the greatest director in the world,” Lars von Trier declared in an already notorious Cannes press conference following the unveiling of “Antichrist” in May. Unable to resist such shameless baiting, most critics either responded with affectionate exasperation (“Oh, Lars!”) or, as one suspects von Trier preferred, tomato-faced indignation.

What few did, however, was entertain the possibility that he might be telling the truth. It’s a conclusion that, even on the imperfect evidence of “Antichrist,” this viewer is willing to consider.

Few contemporary filmmakers are as adept at arousing feeling as Lars von Trier – by which I refer not merely to the ingenious media-provocateur act he performs to market his work, but the actual excesses and polarities of emotion he mines within his own cinema.

Von Trier’s best films arouse equal measures of devotion and resentment because they engage human empathy with no concessions whatsoever to conventional artistic standards of restraint or good taste; like their psychologically frail heroines – Bess in “Breaking the Waves,” Selma in “Dancer in the Dark,” Grace in “Dogville” – they teeter on the brink of self-destruction simply because they feel too much.

I must slightly temper that argument upfront by admitting that “Antichrist,” as mercurial and bruising as it so often is, is not one of von Trier’s very best. Though it by and large meets the criteria described above – and its unnamed anti-heroine is a fascinating, near-parodic amalgamation of physical traits and psychological symptoms from all the director’s women – it lacks the emotional breadth of “Breaking the Waves,” or the formal and ideological conviction of “Dogville.” Unusually for von Trier, for all the film’s sledgehammer brutality in its concluding chapters, it’s rather coy about what it actually wants to say.

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June 23, 2009
Back in the spotlight

UPDATE: Sorry, my fascination is unending. The Guardian’s Xan Brooks comes out in full support of the film:

I stumble out in a daze, momentarily unsure whether I loved it or loathed it. Abruptly I realise that I love it. Von Trier has slapped Cannes with an astonishing, extraordinary picture – shocking and comical; a funhouse of terrors (of primal nature, of female sexuality) that rattles the bones and fizzes the blood before bowing out with a presumptuous dedication to Andrei Tarkovsky that had sections of the crowd hooting in fury … Pound for pound, (“A Prophet”) is surely the strongest film of the competition so far. Why, then, is it “Antichrist” that keeps me awake last night, whirling like a dervish in the darkness of the room?

EARLIER: Somehow I get the feeling that Lars Von Trier went to bed last night a very satisfied man. After the deafening indifference that greeted “The Boss Of It All” and “Manderlay,” he arrived at Cannes with one objective more crucial than any other: to prove that his work could still inspire feeling and discussion. Point proven.

Whether or not “Antichrist” is as awful as some people seem to think — and indeed, not everyone does think so — is beside the point. For all his genius (and I do think he is one of the most extraordinary filmmakers of his time), Von Trier shamelessly thrives on attention; when his work is ignored, as has been the case these past six years, his own creative mojo appears to flag. Much has been said about how “Antichrist” is the product of a recent bout of severe depression; perhaps his rediscovered capacity for provocation signals a renewed willingness to engage, and a more fruitful creative period to come.

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May 18, 2009
‘Antichrist’ causes outrage on the Croisette

Oh dear — this is turning out to be a pretty rough weekend at Cannes. We’re still awaiting the first official reviews of Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist,” which just screened this evening, but it seems to have attracted the full ire of the notoriously excitable Cannes crowd. Boos, gasps and laughter reportedly greeted the screening on the gory, sexually explicit film, which apparently throws everything from talking animals to genital mutilation into the pot.

Jeff Wells pulls no punches in his assassination of the film:

Easily one of the biggest debacles in Cannes Film Festival history and the complete meltdown of a major film artist in a way that invites comparison to the sinking of the Titanic … It’s an out-and-out disaster — one of the most absurdly on-the-nose, heavy-handed and unintentionally comedic calamities I’ve ever seen in my life. On top of which it’s dedicated to the late Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, whose rotted and decomposed body is now quite possibly clawing its way out of the grave to stalk the earth, find an axe and slay Von Trier in his bed.

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May 17, 2009
New WTF still from Von Trier’s ‘Antichrist’

I go back and forth with Lars Von Trier. Lots of respect for “Breaking the Waves,” hated “Dancer in the Dark,” “Dogville” topped my list in 2004 (though shamefully I’ve yet to see “Manderlay”), etc., etc. But I can’t wait to see “Antichrist.” This new still from the film totally freaks me out but I can’t look away. What’s most striking, however, is how classy the composition is. I thought about linking rather than posting, since “NSFW” is arguable, but I figured screw it (no pun intended):

(Courtesy: filmz.dk)

March 24, 2009