80, 454, 1168 Lars von Trier's Europe Trilogy

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Jack Phillips
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Re: 80 The Element of Crime

#51 Post by Jack Phillips » Wed Jun 04, 2008 9:38 pm

Oh, no doubt. But that's no reason for the rest of us to knuckle under.

forkupine
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Re: 80 The Element of Crime

#52 Post by forkupine » Thu Jun 05, 2008 2:23 am

Or how about EPIDEMIC which is IMHO the best of the trilogy?

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Jeff
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Re: 454 Europa

#53 Post by Jeff » Mon Sep 15, 2008 6:30 pm

Announced for December.

Narshty
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Re: 454 Europa

#54 Post by Narshty » Mon Sep 15, 2008 6:34 pm

So, aside from the Howard Hampton essay, if you have the 4-disc Europe Trilogy boxset there's nothing new at all on here?

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AlexHansen
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Re: 454 Europa

#55 Post by AlexHansen » Mon Sep 15, 2008 6:45 pm

Narshty wrote:So, aside from the Howard Hampton essay, if you have the 4-disc Europe Trilogy boxset there's nothing new at all on here?
The commentary is new (or at least different).

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colinr0380
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Re: 454 Europa

#56 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Sep 15, 2008 6:49 pm

AlexHansen wrote:
Narshty wrote:So, aside from the Howard Hampton essay, if you have the 4-disc Europe Trilogy boxset there's nothing new at all on here?
The commentary is new (or at least different).
No, that commentary was in the boxset too but the one thing missing is the select scene commentary in English between von Trier, Udo Kier and Jean-Marc Barr. It sounds like it would be much better than it actually is unfortunately (and I was really looking forward to it since Kier's commentary on Flesh For Frankenstein/Blood For Dracula was so fun), so you are not missing anything particularly enlightening.

Apart from that everything else is present and correct. The Trier's Element film and Europa - The Faecal Location were contained on the fourth supplement disc of the Electric Parc boxset rather than the Europa disc itself.

Looking through the supplements the big addition appears to be:
2005 interviews with cinematographer Henning Bendtsen, composer Joachim Holbek, costume designer Manon Rasmussen, film-school teacher Mogens Rukov, editor/director Tómas Gislason, producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen, art director Peter Grant, actor Michael Simpson, production manager Per Arman, actor Ole Ernst
As an aside, Mogens Rukov has a small role in Element of Crime.

Michael Simpson was also in Epidemic as the taxi driver having a fit of giggles and as the priest in the film within the film. Perhaps he might be best known for his role as the hospital janitor/voodoo practicing Haitian from the two series of The Kingdom.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Tue Sep 16, 2008 11:19 am, edited 7 times in total.

Narshty
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Re: 454 Europa

#57 Post by Narshty » Mon Sep 15, 2008 6:50 pm

AlexHansen wrote:
Narshty wrote:So, aside from the Howard Hampton essay, if you have the 4-disc Europe Trilogy boxset there's nothing new at all on here?
The commentary is new (or at least different).
Well I suppose it could be, but the Europe Trilogy set also has a commentary by von Trier and Peter Aalbæk Jensen in Danish with subtitles (see here).

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colinr0380
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Re: 454 Europa

#58 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:04 pm

Trier's Element is a great addition - the latter sections focus on the initial stages of Dimension, von Trier's film he proposes to be shot in stages over 30 years. I've no idea whether he's still keeping up with it, but it's interesting seeing them filming with Barr, Kier and Eddie Constantine, who handles a request to incorporate footage from his funeral when he dies into the film with remarkable grace!

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AlexHansen
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Re: 454 Europa

#59 Post by AlexHansen » Tue Sep 16, 2008 2:32 am

I took a quick peek at the back of the box and it didn't mention the Trier/Jensen track, hence my mistake. The funny thing is I looked at the DVD Times review to check up on the docs, but ignored the discussion of the commentaries. Ah well. And I agree that the loss of the track with Kier and Barr isn't all that devastating. I don't remember much of it other than it being very dull.

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Re: 454 Europa

#60 Post by cdnchris » Tue Nov 25, 2008 12:29 am


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Murdoch
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Re: 454 Europa

#61 Post by Murdoch » Sat Nov 29, 2008 3:52 pm


piano player
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Re: 454 Europa

#62 Post by piano player » Wed Dec 31, 2008 9:22 am

Ernst-Hugo Jaregard is priceless as the conductor in this movie.

Come to think of it, I actually prefer the von Trier aesthetics of Europa and his eariler movies, it is certainly more effective than the headache 'dogme' stuff he became obsessed with later, anyway.

Great film on every single mark, kudos to Criterion for realising it. (Although the commentary on the region 2 release is funnier).

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Re: 454 Europa

#63 Post by Rich Malloy » Wed Dec 31, 2008 12:22 pm

piano player wrote:Ernst-Hugo Jaregard is priceless as the conductor in this movie.

Come to think of it, I actually prefer the von Trier aesthetics of Europa and his eariler movies, it is certainly more effective than the headache 'dogme' stuff he became obsessed with later, anyway.
Jaregard was a wonderment, certainly, but I can't agree with the rest! In fact, I think "Idioterne" (his only "true" dogme film) is one of his most successful in all respects: cinematically, philosophically, as a social critique or strictly in terms of ensemble acting. I find it to be simultaneously among his most experimental films and his most emotionally affecting. And I consider "Breaking the Waves" and "Dancer in the Dark" to be at nearly the same high level.

Tastes differ, eh? No great pronouncement, certainly, but what surprises me most about your rejection of LvT's middle period "headache inducing obsessions" is that it requires you to dismiss Ernst-Hugo Jaregard's towering achievement as Stig Helmer, the jerkwad Swedish physician navigating the Danish scum in "Riget". Few performances are so emblematic, so memorable, so hateful and hilarious - and certainly greater than anything Jaregard accomplished in "Europa". And Trier's first hand-held, DV foray into what soon would be distilled and refined into the tongue-in-cheek tenets of dogme-95 remains among his most accessible and successful works. It's the first time Trier seems to have acknowledged humanity - if not exactly generously, then at least in all its petty, messy reality - and this series and his subsequent films seemed finally to emerge from that hermetically-sealed cocoon of solipsism that always struck me as a distancing effect without any real purpose. More a reflection of a certain callowness on Trier's part than an aesthetic.

Which isn't to say there's not a lot to admire in that first period. But as much as I like that initial trio, they are in too many ways derivative of the genres they appropriate and simultaneously too embalmed in a formalizing aesthetic to evoke that certain "breath of life" that separates a transcending work of art from an exercise in form. I'm certainly not denying that the later films aren't constructions of a rigid formalism of another kind, just that the middle and later eras tend to be more successful for my tastes, more emotionally generous, more organic, more multi-faceted in their realization and multi-valent in meaning. And, yes, I include even the late-era Brechtian pantomimes, which mark - among other things - Nicole Kidman's final performance as species Homo sapiens before completing her metamorphosis into the brittle, porcelein mannequin that slowly rotates before the camera today.

If you haven't seen "Riget", then you owe it to yourself to wade into it's dingy DV, hand-held reality - heachaches be damned - if only for the gobsmacking brilliance of Jaregard's Dr. Helmer.

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Re: 454 Europa

#64 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Dec 31, 2008 3:06 pm

Rich Malloy wrote:And Trier's first hand-held, DV foray into what soon would be distilled and refined into the tongue-in-cheek tenets of dogme-95 remains among his most accessible and successful works. It's the first time Trier seems to have acknowledged humanity - if not exactly generously, then at least in all its petty, messy reality - and this series and his subsequent films seemed finally to emerge from that hermetically-sealed cocoon of solipsism that always struck me as a distancing effect without any real purpose. More a reflection of a certain callowness on Trier's part than an aesthetic.

Which isn't to say there's not a lot to admire in that first period. But as much as I like that initial trio, they are in too many ways derivative of the genres they appropriate and simultaneously too embalmed in a formalizing aesthetic to evoke that certain "breath of life" that separates a transcending work of art from an exercise in form. I'm certainly not denying that the later films aren't constructions of a rigid formalism of another kind, just that the middle and later eras tend to be more successful for my tastes, more emotionally generous, more organic, more multi-faceted in their realization and multi-valent in meaning.
I think the conventional approach has been to comment on the hyper-stylised atmosphere of the early films compared to the lack of style of the Dogme films. Beside considering that the handheld style of Idioterne, Breaking The Waves and Dancer In The Dark is as carefully managed and manipulated as anything in Element of Crime or Europa (I've seen enough truly incompetently made films for the achievement of the Dogme groups visuals and editing strategies to be apparent. As much as I like Festen, I can understand the criticism that it uses the carefully managed lack of film technique to add a layer of resonance to a relatively conventionally plotted family drama), I think the major change is more the move from considering actors as posable dialogue delivery devices used only as elements that contribute to the visuals inside the larger picture being created to foregrounding the input and performance from actors to create the emotional resonance of the film, with the only real focal point being the human face.
If you haven't seen "Riget", then you owe it to yourself to wade into it's dingy DV, hand-held reality - heachaches be damned - if only for the gobsmacking brilliance of Jaregard's Dr. Helmer.
I completely agree, The Kingdom and its sequel mark the transition from perfect style to handheld faux-reality beautifully, combining shakey cam with special effects. If you are not bothered about the work being unfinished (since Järegård and then Kirsten Rolffes died before the third part could be made), it is a very satisfying series - far better than that atrocious US remake by Stephen King, Kingdom Hospital.

The only other film I have had the chance to see Ernst-Hugo Järegård in so far is The Slingshot, a far more conventionally made coming of age tale. He plays the nasty schoolteacher to perfection and certainly brings the mannerisms you would expect to the role - and it may save you from shakey cam headaches!
And, yes, I include even the late-era Brechtian pantomimes, which mark - among other things - Nicole Kidman's final performance as species Homo sapiens before completing her metamorphosis into the brittle, porcelein mannequin that slowly rotates before the camera today.
I must disagree with this - she was in Birth as well!

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Barmy
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Re: 454 Europa

#65 Post by Barmy » Wed Dec 31, 2008 6:03 pm

Nicole was human in Margot at the Wedding and (partially) The Invasion as well.

piano player
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Re: 454 Europa

#66 Post by piano player » Wed Dec 31, 2008 6:58 pm

Rich Malloy wrote:
piano player wrote:Ernst-Hugo Jaregard is priceless as the conductor in this movie.

Come to think of it, I actually prefer the von Trier aesthetics of Europa and his eariler movies, it is certainly more effective than the headache 'dogme' stuff he became obsessed with later, anyway.
Jaregard was a wonderment, certainly, but I can't agree with the rest! In fact, I think "Idioterne" (his only "true" dogme film) is one of his most successful in all respects: cinematically, philosophically, as a social critique or strictly in terms of ensemble acting. I find it to be simultaneously among his most experimental films and his most emotionally affecting. And I consider "Breaking the Waves" and "Dancer in the Dark" to be at nearly the same high level.

Tastes differ, eh? No great pronouncement, certainly, but what surprises me most about your rejection of LvT's middle period "headache inducing obsessions" is that it requires you to dismiss Ernst-Hugo Jaregard's towering achievement as Stig Helmer, the jerkwad Swedish physician navigating the Danish scum in "Riget". Few performances are so emblematic, so memorable, so hateful and hilarious - and certainly greater than anything Jaregard accomplished in "Europa". And Trier's first hand-held, DV foray into what soon would be distilled and refined into the tongue-in-cheek tenets of dogme-95 remains among his most accessible and successful works. It's the first time Trier seems to have acknowledged humanity - if not exactly generously, then at least in all its petty, messy reality - and this series and his subsequent films seemed finally to emerge from that hermetically-sealed cocoon of solipsism that always struck me as a distancing effect without any real purpose. More a reflection of a certain callowness on Trier's part than an aesthetic.

Which isn't to say there's not a lot to admire in that first period. But as much as I like that initial trio, they are in too many ways derivative of the genres they appropriate and simultaneously too embalmed in a formalizing aesthetic to evoke that certain "breath of life" that separates a transcending work of art from an exercise in form. I'm certainly not denying that the later films aren't constructions of a rigid formalism of another kind, just that the middle and later eras tend to be more successful for my tastes, more emotionally generous, more organic, more multi-faceted in their realization and multi-valent in meaning. And, yes, I include even the late-era Brechtian pantomimes, which mark - among other things - Nicole Kidman's final performance as species Homo sapiens before completing her metamorphosis into the brittle, porcelein mannequin that slowly rotates before the camera today.

If you haven't seen "Riget", then you owe it to yourself to wade into it's dingy DV, hand-held reality - heachaches be damned - if only for the gobsmacking brilliance of Jaregard's Dr. Helmer.
I have seen Riget. Many times. In fact I count it as the one of the finest pieces of television ever made...and, yes, Stig Helmer remains one of the coolest, most witty, characters of the swedish medical board. As for the dogme/headache part I stand by it. It is my opinion - as well as Ingmar Bergman's - that von Trier's movies around that point could have been even better, had he only chosen to set them free, instead of following a bunch of destructive rules.

But then again, von Trier's 'dogme' comrades are even worse. 'Festen' by Thomas Winterberg is a case in point here. Basically a fantastic movie that drags in the dust a bit because of the wont for dogme, french classicism and Aristoteles still undefined "theory of the three unities".

Then again, I love Festen, and I love von Trier. I just wish those danes weren't so self-destructive.

Rich Malloy
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Re: 454 Europa

#67 Post by Rich Malloy » Fri Jan 02, 2009 11:28 am

Player, is it your opinion that "Riget" is one of the finest television pieces ever produced despite those elements that would later be codified as dogme? Do you find you like it more than Element/Epidemic/Europa?

I ask because I have a hard time dismissing those dogme elements as a "bunch of destructive rules", particularly in the case of Trier. I'm of the opinion that those "rules", in both large and small ways, set him free. I'd further argue that Trier's dogme wasn't really so much about jettisoning the genre elements derived from the popular cinema. In fact, those remain in full-force in a supernatural serial like "Riget", a classic haunted house story featuring Miss Marple by way of ER. What dogme seemed to do for Trier, at least most effectively, was to free him from the shackles of stultifying art-house propriety.

More specifically, by depriving himself of a certain constricting hand-me-down aesthetic derived from the dinosaur DNA of the European art-cinema -- the slowly tracking/panning camera, the long take/medium shot, the winking appropriation of emblematic cinematic grammar, the meticulously realized mise-en-scene art-produced within an inch of its life, the reflexive and all-too-familiar socio-political tropes of a displaced Europe and disintegrating europeanness so characteristic of 20th century continental cinema and all the familiar, formulaic tropes we associate with that -- by depriving himself of the very crutches upon which his earlier films lumbered, Trier was able to capture something more elusive and more elemental.

Thereafter, a Trier film strikes me as more alive, more engaging. No longer a petrified husk clearly labeled and carefully pinned to a board, but an amorphous, organic vessel through which something like oxygen flowed - a lifeforce, spirit, blut - a looser construct allowing for the happy accident, the free association, the real emotion, all those qualities we might refer to as more essentially "human". Colin's point about Trier's approach to his actors is particularly astute in this regard, as though he was seized with the sudden realization that he could draw from their pulsing veins something more than the bloodless cyphers and abstracted personas that populated his prior films.

Trier's more recent work perhaps seeks a balance between those first two periods, though "Manderley" strikes me as a flatter film than "Dogville", perhaps reflecting a disenchantment with the strictures Trier set for the America trilogy. But rather than attempting to contextualize those late-era films, I'll simply retreat into personal opinion: none of Trier's films from any period are so affecting to me as those we associate with "dogme". Certainly this includes "Riget", the breakthrough and prototype (did you know the inspiration came from Barry Levinson's police procedural "Homicide: Life on the Street"?), but I'd be remiss if I didn't again state that "Idioterne" - Trier's only "dogme certified" film - still strikes me as the most perfectly realized of his career.

Rich Malloy
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Re: 454 Europa

#68 Post by Rich Malloy » Fri Jan 02, 2009 11:44 am

And I would be especially remiss for not pointing out that "Idioterne" is in dire need of a proper home video release, and is precisely the sort of title that screams out for a lavish Criterion special edition wherein - among other things - much scholarship and no small amount of sport can be made of the whole dogme thang. If this hasn't yet been realized for any reason other than "rights issues"... then I reckon it warrants a "Wtf?" email to Dear Jon.

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Re: 454 Europa

#69 Post by piano player » Fri Jan 02, 2009 12:34 pm

Rich Malloy wrote:Player, is it your opinion that "Riget" is one of the finest television pieces ever produced despite those elements that would later be codified as dogme? Do you find you like it more than Element/Epidemic/Europa?

I ask because I have a hard time dismissing those dogme elements as a "bunch of destructive rules", particularly in the case of Trier. I'm of the opinion that those "rules", in both large and small ways, set him free. I'd further argue that Trier's dogme wasn't really so much about jettisoning the genre elements derived from the popular cinema. In fact, those remain in full-force in a supernatural serial like "Riget", a classic haunted house story featuring Miss Marple by way of ER. What dogme seemed to do for Trier, at least most effectively, was to free him from the shackles of stultifying art-house propriety..
Not despite, no. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that the style of Riget meant a creative rebirth for Lars von Trier. What I'm trying to say is not that 'hand held camera and lack of post-production sucks', I'm merely implying that the very thought of setting up rules around cinema is absurd, and that it will always lead to a certain element of dishonesty. In idioterne the faux lack of skill is not headache inducing (for me) because of 'a jumping camera', or anything like that. It is simply because the director has chosen to use these rules to the extreme, the effect is simply claustrophobic and unfree, and therefore the movie suffers. What I'm asking for is a certain level of pragmaticism - Could this scene have been better an other way? Yes, of course, but if it isn't dogme I won't use it...

Riget is visually stunning. But that's not because they decided to run around with hand held cameras - it's because the cameramen were top notch. Had they - God forbid - decided to use a steadicam the end result would perhaps be even better. (I'm not sure if Riget qualifies as dogme though).

Trier's latest film "direktören för det hele", uses an 'automatic' computer that choses camera angles in a seemingly random pattern. I do admit it is a fun approach, and dogme is also fun, but taken as a rule it will simply become tedious.

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Re: 454 Europa

#70 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jan 11, 2009 8:17 pm

I was just wondering if there were any influence of Sam Fuller's Verboten! on Europa? They seem to share similar plots (I'm afraid it is a Fuller I have not yet seen). Perhaps I'm just reading too much into Criterion's December pairing of a von Trier and a Fuller film!

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Re: 454 Europa

#71 Post by Magic Hate Ball » Thu Jul 30, 2009 2:18 pm

If I liked Dancer In The Dark and Dogville, would I like this? The trailer looks really interesting and I was thinking of blind-buying it at this Barnes & Nobel sale.

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Antoine Doinel
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Re: 454 Europa

#72 Post by Antoine Doinel » Thu Jul 30, 2009 2:22 pm

It's quite different from those two films, but it's still quite an excellent film and certainly worth a blind buy at 50% off.

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foliagecop
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Re: 454 Europa

#73 Post by foliagecop » Fri Jul 31, 2009 5:58 am

It was 'Europa' that first got me into von Trier. The sheer style of the thing struck a chord with me - the superimpositions, the artsiness of the b&w/colour switcheroo, the in-yer-face blatantness of the Holocaust reference. I thought to myself, 'If this is what makes a von Trier film, gimme more!'

Luckily, I was quickly to realise this was no one-trick, one-style pony. 'The Kingdom' (which I devoured in one 5-hour sitting in a packed Glasgow Film Theatre on its initial release) and 'Breaking The Waves' (a gorgeous, heart-breaking film) soon put paid to that notion.

Even though von Trier's sensibilities have moved far away from the highly stylized 'Europa', it's still I film I love revisiting. It's (literally) a ride from start to finish. And that von Sydow narration ...

"On the mental count of ten, you will be in Europa. Be there at ten. I say: ten."

I still get chills.

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Re: 80 The Element of Crime

#74 Post by Bloody Benten » Sat Aug 01, 2009 10:28 pm

do you guys think this will be re-released by Criterion soon?

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Re: 80 The Element of Crime

#75 Post by CSM126 » Sat Aug 01, 2009 10:32 pm

I don't see why it would be, except on the outside chance of a blu-ray upgrade. As far as von Trier goes, CC are probably focused more on introducing more of his films to the collection (Idiots, for example, which is supposedly in the pipeline) than on looking back to this. Unless I missed a memo and Element is actually a big seller, which is probably all that would bring their attention back to it.

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