Dogme 95

Film: Festen(The Celebration); Idioterne (The Idiots)
Format: DVD from NetFlix (Festen) and video from The Magic Flashdrive (Idioterne), both on laptop.

When Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg created the Dogme 95 idea, the point was to get back the most basic of ideas in filmmaking. Films were to be made quickly, without special effects, without massive budgets, without even much in terms of lighting, makeup, or costuming. The whole point of the movement was to hammer home the point that great and important stories could be told without all of the tricks that the audience has grown used to seeing. In short, Dogme 95 is about the power of storytelling rather than the power of technology. It makes some Dogme films difficult to watch, but it’s a noble idea if nothing else.

Festen (The Celebration) is the first Dogme 95 film ever released. To sum the film up as quickly as possible, a family gathers to celebrate the 60th birthday of the family patriarch and everything goes to hell, hits bedrock, and starts mining. It becomes evident that there is a lot of bad blood right away and a lot of baggage that will be unpacked as the film progresses.

Sexual Healing

Film: Breaking the Waves
Format: VHS from Oregon Public Library through interlibrary loan on big ol’ television.

Is Lars von Trier something of an acquired taste? It might just be me, and while I thought very much at first that I’d like him a lot, I like him less and less the more of his work that I see. Riget was amateurish in some ways but interesting with its ideas if not always in the execution. Dancer in the Dark was a bizarre combination of naivety and brutality that I found worth watching if not so much something I’d want to see again in the near future. And now there’s Breaking the Waves, the first of von Trier’s loose trilogy of films about women who act immorally but still retain a certain amount of innocence, a trilogy that ended with the aforementioned Dancer in the Dark.

Bess McNeill (Emily Watson) is a vaguely simple, possibly dotty Irish girl who wishes to marry outside of her community. In fact, she wishes to marry a big Nordic guy named Jan (Stellan Skarsgard). They do marry, and for Bess, this is the beginning of the happiest time in her life. Jan is a big bear of a man, who introduces Bess to the pleasures of sex. The two are devoted to each other, but eventually, Jan has to return to work on an oil rig. Bess, whose simplicity tends to come out more in church (she prays and responds to herself for God), prays for Jan to be returned to her. He is; an accident on the rig has left him paralyzed.

Naturally, Bess blames herself, thinking that God has crippled Jan as a lesson to her for her selfishness. Jan, sick and fading, tells Bess to take other lovers and relay the details to him to give him something to live for. She is shocked and refuses at first, but when Jan’s health takes a dramatic turn for the worse, she agrees, and he starts to recover. Bess soon believes that what she is doing is God’s will—her promiscuity will somehow heal her husband from his injuries.

For whatever reason, this film was a very hard watch for me. Innocence corrupted seems to be a central theme for von Trier, and it’s a theme that I understand, but don’t really like much. His view of this theme, though, is an interesting one. If an innocent—and Bess truly is an innocent in this film—is corrupted in some way but doesn’t realize or understand the corruption, does it really take place? Certainly everyone in her town believes that Bess has become wanton, and by all accounts, she has. But in her world, her wantonness has a function, and to her mind, it must not be evil because it is God’s will.

This, of course, brings up the nature of religious belief. For many people, the idea of belief is more than just a touchy subject; it is taboo, and looking at the beliefs of others in a critical way is something that not only shouldn’t be done, but in a real way cannot be done. Bess’s beliefs in this case seem to run counter to everything that she has been taught, and counter to basic Western morality. But is she really guilty? Or are the townspeople who shun her essentially more guilty because of the way that Bess is treated?

If I’m honest with myself, one of the reasons I found this film difficult to get through was the graininess of the footage. It has the look and feel of a film shot on direct video for television, and that’s difficult to get past at first. In fact, when the film first started, I was unsure that it really was the film.

The performances are good in the main. Emily Watson is excellent as this somewhat addled woman who, for lack of a better way to put it, develops a sort of addiction for her husband, and then an addiction to this idea of curing him. Throughout, no matter how degraded she becomes with the various sex acts (and yes, rape is involved as you had to assume it would be knowing the basic plot), she maintains a sort of childlike innocence. Skarsgard is equally good, first as a physically imposing man and then later as an invalid. The unsung hero of the film is Dodo McNeill (Katrin Cartlidge), who is Bess’s widowed sister-in-law. Naturally, von Trier mainstay Udo Kier makes an appearance as well, and plays a stereotypically Kier-ian sadist.

I’m not sure what to make of it. I’m starting to see von Trier as a sort of low-grade Aronofsky. His work is interesting and thought-provoking. He has strange ideas and makes strange films in which not much good ever happens. But I’d rather watch an Aronofsky movie in most cases, simply because I like what he does with them more than von Trier does. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Why to watch Breaking the Waves: Lars von Trier’s early and edgy work.
Why not to watch: It goes in weird places, which means that it’s a von Trier film.

Musicals with a Twist

Films: Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), Dancer in the Dark
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library (Umbrellas), VHS from DeKalb Public Library (Dancer), both on big ol’ television.

Before I get too involved here, I want to preface this with the part of this movie that still makes my head spin a little bit. Our two main characters here are Guy (pronounced “Gee” with a hard g”) and Genevieve (pronounced “Zhaun-vee-EV”). While not particularly uncommon names in France, these are not names we hear much in the States. Nonetheless, my wife’s parents also happened to be named Guy and Genevieve, albeit pronounced in the American fashion.

In musicals, typically the characters break out into song at specific times, and it’s never that hard to tell when a song is coming. The music swells a little, the people stand up a little straighter to get their breathing right, and all conversation stops. This is not the case with Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). The reason for that is that every single line of dialogue in this movie is sung. There is no speech; there is only music and lyrics. This is jarring at first, especially with the subtitles on, as it quickly becomes apparent that, like everyday life, most of the lyrics are pretty banal. People ask for their car to be filled with gas, buy umbrellas, and talk about what they want for dinner. They just do it as a song. There’s no effort toward rhyme, no effort to produce a chorus.

This is an important distinction. While all of the dialogue is sung, it is actual dialogue. These aren’t songs. There’s no reprise except at times in the music. There aren’t frequently repeated lines or recognizable stanzas. A given speech is as long as it normally would be—there’s no effort put into characters having their dialogue of a certain length or set to a specific meter. Essentially, it’s a regular movie, except that the music is constant and everybody sings all the time. The next time you speak with a co-worker, imagine singing your conversation. SomeTIMES you might EMphasize words, speeduptosticktothemeter and then gooooo slooooooooooooow. It’s like that.

Genevieve (Catherine Deneuve) lives and works with her mother Madame Emery (Anne Vernon) in her mother’s umbrella shop, called “Les Parapluies de Cherbourg,” hence the name of the film. Genevieve is in love with Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), who works as a mechanic. Her mother stands against the union for several reasons. For one thing, Genevieve is only 17 and Guy is just 20. Additionally, she has had a note for 80,000 francs come due, and if she can’t pay, she’ll lose the shop. Genevieve doesn’t care—she loves Guy and wants to marry him, and he wants to marry her. Guy lives with his godmother Elise (Mireille Perrey), who is taken care of by Madeleine (Ellen Farner). It’s evident that while Guy loves Genevieve, Madeleine has a little crush on Guy.

To save the shop, Genevieve convinces her mother to part with some of her jewelry. The jeweler can’t buy her necklace, but a diamond merchant named Roland Cassard (Marc Michel) offers to take the necklace and sell it on her behalf. There are a few tense days as they wait for the money, and Genevieve goes off to spend time with Guy. As it happens, he’s gotten his draft notice and will have to spend two years in Algiers. The two spend a night of passion together and he leaves. Meanwhile, Cassard returns with the proceeds from the necklace and shows interest in Genevieve.

Naturally, that night of passion results in pregnancy. Cassard continues to press his suit for Genevieve despite the fact that she is carrying another man’s baby. Guy writes infrequently, and eventually, feeling abandoned by him, Genevieve agrees to marry Cassard, and starts a new life with him.

Two years later, Guy returns to Cherbourg. He quits his job almost immediately, and just as suddenly, Elise dies. Now missing the two most important women in his life, unable to marry Genevieve, he realizes how much he likes Madeleine, and after a courtship, they marry and have a son. Guy uses his inheritance to purchase his own service station. It is in that role that he is working when Genevieve returns to Cherbourg with her daughter…who is also his daughter.

Here’s the thing—the story here is one that has been told and retold a number of times, but there is a significant difference with this telling. However, this difference is best put in a spoiler.

*** THE SPOILERS OF THIS BLOG ***

They recognize each other right away of course, and Guy invites Genevieve into his office. She asks him if he would like to meet his daughter, and he declines, telling her that she should leave. As she drives away, Madeleine and their son arrive, and he plays with his son in the fresh snowfall outside.

Here’s why I appreciate this: The typical romantic movie would have these two run off together, or at least be really tempted to rekindle their romance. It’s evident that there’s some desire on both of their parts right away, but that this desire is greatly subdued by the reality of their lives. It’s not evident that Genevieve is happy or unhappy, but she doesn’t press the point, or ask Guy to run away with her. Guy’s life with Madeleine is evidently satisfying enough that he’s not really tempted in the first place. This is a real decision from real people who live in the real world.

*** THE UMBRELLA IS CLOSED ***

In a typical musical, we’d find quickly that Cassard is a bastard and that Madeleine is a shrew. In this case, Cassard is actually a very nice guy and Madeleine is quite sweet. They’re nice people—they just aren’t the people Guy and Genevieve originally fell in love with.

There’s an initial shock to this film once everyone starts singing, and a second shock once it’s realized just how banal most of the dialogue is. But this passes. The movie is completely internally consistent, and most musicals are not. I rather liked it. Surprise, surprise. I’ll say this, though: now that I’ve seen it and know the story, I’d rather watch it without the subtitles so I’m not constantly reminded of the rather pedestrian nature of the lyrics.

Dancer in the Dark is a completely different take on musicals—different in many ways from the standard and also different from Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. For starters, the first musical number doesn’t appear for the first 40 minutes or so of the film. Selma Jezkova (Bjork) is a Czech immigrant who has moved to Washington State to create a better life for her son. Specifically, she has inherited a genetic disorder that has been slowly ruining her vision, and the condition is progressing. She works at a local factory, and she and her son scrimp as much as possible. She tells him it is because they are so poor, but in reality, she is saving for an operation that will prevent the condition that is blinding her from doing the same thing to her son (Vladica Kostic).

Selma is also enamored of musicals, and participates in amateur theater. Since her eyesight is disintegrating, she is taken back and forth to rehearsals by Kathy (Catherine Deneuve). Selma and her son live in a trailer on the property of Bill (David Morse) and his wife (Cara Seymour). We learn quickly that Bill has inherited a great deal of money, but the money has run out. Debts are coming due, his wife is a spendthrift, and he can’t bear to tell her that they are broke.

He tells this to Selma, and she tells him about her eye condition and the money she is saving for her son’s procedure. Her eyes have gotten so bad, though, that he feigns leaving the room to discover where she keeps the money. When Selma’s eyes have gotten to the point where she can no longer work, she discovers that the money has been stolen. She confronts Bill, who has told his wife that Selma attempted to seduce him. A confrontation happens, and ultimately, Selma kills Bill to get her money back. She is promptly arrested and sentenced to hang.

Along the way, we encounter a cast of excellent character actors including Peter Stormare as Jeff, Selma’s potential love interest; Lars von Trier favorite Udo Kier as a doctor; Siobhan Fallon as a prison guard; Joel Grey as an aging former tap dance star; and Zeljko Ivanek as a prosecuting attorney.

Where the film is surprising is in the musical numbers. Selma is entranced by old movie musicals, and frequently fantasizes about them. Any rhythmic noise, like the machines in the factory in which she works, becomes the background for substantial musical numbers that include anyone who happens to be in the area. These are elaborate and fascinating, and evidently take place entirely in her mind, because when the musical numbers end, no time has passed.

For me, someone who tends to have a problem with musicals, strangely enough, it’s the musical numbers here that make the film work. They make perfect sense to me in the context of this film because they are all fantasies in the mind of Selma. In her musical world, she says, “nothing dreadful ever happens.” After she kills Bill, for instance, a musical number begins in which Bill is alive again and participates, his wife is happy to see Selma and helps her escape, and life is as good as it ever gets.

Of course, nothing good happens here. That’s sort of the point.

I can’t say I enjoyed watching Dancer in the Dark, but I can say that it is very well made and that I’m glad I watched it. With the number of musicals I have enjoyed so far this year, it appears that I can no longer say that I dislike them as a general rule.

It's worth adding this as well: it may very well be that admitting to liking Bjork's music is akin to admitting enjoying Michael Bolton, Celine Dion, or Zamphir, but I'll make the admission. I don't own anything by Bjork, but I've never heard a song of hers on the radio and rushed to turn it off the way I do with most of the garbage my 12-year-old favors. Her odd musical style, rhythmic sense, and phrasings work in this film--the "I've Seen it All" number on the train is one of the best musical numbers I've ever seen in a film, and much of the reason for that is Bjork.

Okay, she's weird. However, if you have children between the ages of five and nine and ever sat with them through an episode of LazyTown on Nickjr., you know that she is not the strangest thing to come from Iceland.

Why to watch Les Parapluies de Cherbourg: A very different sort of musical.
Why not to watch: Remember how much Cop Rock sucked?

Why to watch Dancer in the Dark : The most original take on musicals in a couple of decades.
Why not to watch: The events are inevitable, terrible, and painful to watch.

Danskjävlar!

Film: Riget (The Kingdom)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Let’s assume for a moment that ghosts exist. If we go by the traditional thoughts and beliefs of ghosts, the most likely places a ghost would inhabit would be either a place important to that person in life, or the place of that person’s death. Based on that, it would be an easy assumption that hospitals would be the most haunted places in the world, since hospitals are where most people die.

Riget (The Kingdom), a mini-series made for Danish television, takes that basic premise and runs with it in several different creepy directions. The series of four episodes, totaling about four-and-a-half hours, takes place at the largest, most technologically advanced hospital in Denmark. This hospital, called “Riget,” is experiencing a rush of spectral, otherworldly, inexplicable events that occur either in the hospital or in the lives of the doctors and patients.

Riget is, for lack of a better way to explain it, a medical soap opera from hell. Get rid of the supernatural elements, and it would be a very boring week of General Hospital. This is not to say that Riget is boring or dull. On the contrary—it’s fascinating, and this is entirely because of the disturbing and supernatural elements.

Like any good soap opera, there are a variety of plots that roll around and bounce off each other. When the director has enough space for 280 minutes of film, he’s able to give weight to more than just a single driving story. The main character is Dr. Stig Helmer (Ernst Hugo Jaregard), a Swedish neurosurgeon who has been forced out of his country because of research he stole and published under his own name. Helmer is a complete bastard, the stereotypical doctor who thinks he is God himself, and he despises almost everything about Denmark. Typically, episodes end with Helmer standing on the roof of the hospital screaming about “Danish scum.” Sadly for the brusque and rude Helmer, he botched an operation on a young girl named Mona (Laura Christensen) early in his tenure at Kingdom Hospital. The girl is now in a persistent vegetative state, and Helmer needs to destroy the records of the surgery to keep his own job. Helmer is dedicated to science and frequently squabbles with his love interest, Rigmor (Ghita Norby), who is interested in holistic healing, herbal therapy, and voodoo.

Enter Mrs. Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes), a sensitive who complains of neurological problems in her hands. She hears the sound of a child crying in the elevator, and with the assistance of her son Bulder (Jens Okking), a porter at the hospital, she investigates and finds evidence of the ghost of a girl named Mary (Annevig Schelde Ebbe), who died there in 1919.

Helmer’s foil is Jorgen Krogshoj (Soren Pilmark), whose name is translated as “Hook” according to the subtitles. Hook is also a neurosurgeon, and frequently butts heads with Helmer because the two disagree on almost everything from the way the hospital is run to treatments for specific patients (particularly Mrs. Drusse). Hook lives in the basement of the hospital, a fact known only to a few. Here he collects various objects from the hospital that are being misused (he claims) and redirects them elsewhere. In truth, he runs an active black market, using what he acquires to get what he wants. He has a relationship with Judith (Birgitte Raaberg), who is pregnant by another man. The baby is growing at an unnatural rate, and as evidenced later in the series, there is more than just the growth rate that is unnatural—evidence comes to light that she was actually impregnated by a ghost.

We also have Dr. Bondo (Baard Owe), who teaches at the hospital. He collects medical oddities including, as it turns out, the preserved body of Mary, the ghost girl. A dying patient in the hospital has a huge tumor on his liver, and Bondo is denied the ability to extract and preserve it. Instead, he has the liver, tumor and all, transplanted into his own body as a way to keep it in the hospital’s collection.

Bondo’s main rival is Mogge (Peter Mygind). Mogge is a student who is madly in love with Camilla (Solbjorg Hojfeldt), who spurns him. As a way to stay close to her, Mogge enrolls in a sleep study (run by Hook), where he has disturbing and terrible dreams. Mogge is the son of another doctor, Einar Moesgaard (Holger Juul Hansen), who tries to run Kingdom Hospital as a touchy-feely place, complete with a collection of doctors who form a lodge called the Sons of the Kingdom, where they look out for each other and cover each other’s back.

A pair of dishwashers (Vita Jensen and Morten Rotne Leffers), both suffering from Down Syndrome act as a sort of Greek chorus. We get short snippets of them washing up and discussing the events of the hospital. And this says nothing of the ghost ambulance that arrives every night and vanishes. Or the very special guest appearance by Udo Kier.

Obviously, there’s a lot going on, which makes sense for something that was essentially a short-run soap with spooky stuff happening. It starts very slowly—most of the first episode is really just setting up the characters and giving us the very basics of the supernatural events. We don’t see anything incredibly disturbing until the very end, when Mrs. Drusse investigates the elevator shaft and gets her first look at Mary. From there, however, things begin to weird up quickly, getting far stranger and more disturbing in the second episode and downright creepy in the third and fourth.

As with any good film that tries to truly terrify instead of just go for the gross-out, we learn things slowly, getting new information only as we need new pieces of information. Much of what we see early on is not explained until much later in the series, as it should be. Many of the plots are interconnected, and as we learn about one, we learn about another, and pieces of one affect another.

Much of the reason for the effectiveness of this series comes from the way in which it was filmed. Every frame has a distinct sepia tone, and the cutaway shots of the hospital that act as transitions here (and presumably commercial breaks when this was originally shown on television) are completely sepia. While these are interesting, it’s more interesting to me that the main film itself is so oddly tinted, as if it were dipped in a wash of brown. The camera work looks to be hand-held cameras frequently, which gives this a documentary feel, which is also effective here.

Another effective thing here is that there are a number of comedic touches throughout the film. Many of these are darkly humorous, such as the sequence in which Bulder, Mogge, and Helmer all need to break into the records room at the same time and attempt to bully each other into leaving or avoid being seen by each other. Comedy and horror are often tightly intertwined, and here they are inseparable. A small part of this comes in the form of co-director Lars von Trier talking about his work over the credits.

The only thing that really disturbs me here is that many of the medical procedures are shown not in full, but at least in part. I don’t mind gore, but there’s something about surgery that really bothers me. I don’t want to see brain surgery from the top of the patient’s head, or the really meaty parts (pun intended) of the liver transplant. It’s the same reason I never really got into shows like ER. Even parts of NCIS bug me at a deep level, and I could have lived without it here.

Good stuff. This was vaguely remade as Kingdom Hospital with Stephen King’s name tacked onto the front. There was also a sequel miniseries made that followed up where Riget left off, and evidently left as many questions unanswered as this one does. Still, even though most of the plots are left unresolved, it is very much worth watch from end to end. Sadly, because of the deaths of two of the principal actors (Jaregard and Rolffes) as well as the male dishwasher, it is unlikely that the third and final installment will ever be filmed.

Why to watch Riget: Supernatural chills that really work.
Why not to watch: Some surgical procedures are not hidden, and most questions are left unanswered.