In Your Hands: 2005

Considering the state of Dogme in 2005

It’s now ten years since the Danish film-makers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg produced the Dogme manifesto, a series of rules that stripped film-making down to the bare bones. There could be no artificial sets, no special effects, no stories set in the past or the future, and no music other than that played live on set — and the diktats of the manifesto soon filtered through to other areas of Danish cinema.

It all sounds rather serious but, in fact, says the director Annette K. Olesen, a lot of the films made in her native Denmark in the past decade have been comedies. Her Mike Leigh-inspired Minor Mishaps, for instance, was written by Kim Fupz Aakeson — “the funnyman in Danish films”.

Olesen called on Aakeson again when she was asked to make a Dogme movie, but this time both were determined to “shift gears”. The result is In Your Hands, a tough and uncompromising story that asks a lot of questions but refuses to provide any answers. In it, Anna (Ann Eleonora Jørgensen), an inexperienced and idealistic priest, takes up a post at a prison for women, where a new inmate, Kate (Trine Dyrholm), is apparently performing miracles. “There’ s something about her and God,” says one prisoner, claiming that Kate cured her drug addition. Though she is both fascinated and threatened by the cell block saviour, Anna turns to Kate for help when her unborn baby is diagnosed with a chromosome defect whose consequences cannot be predicted.

“The highest criterion of success as an individual in our society is to be in control and to be able to predict your life,” says Olesen. “What we really wanted to explore is the fact that if you want to control every square millimetre of life, you cannot submit to anything because it’s equal to giving up control.”

While submission in the film has the positive effect of, for instance, letting love in, it also leaves the door open for betrayal and disappointment. But that, Olesen seems to be saying, is the chance we all take in our relationships.

Ironically for a film with a priest as its protagonist, In Your Hands feels more like an existentialist drama than a religious one. There is no moralising, the characters have to make their own choices and live with the consequences.

“I’m very happy that you say that,” says Olesen, “because we’re not telling people to go to church. We talked about this film in a very existential way, so you can probably say we’re more related to existentialists than theologians.”

Thus we see Anna struggling to reconcile her faith in God and His unconditional mercy with the demands of a society that emphasises personal responsibility and perfection. Should she terminate her baby because there is a chance it may be handicapped? And if she does, will she be able to live with the knowledge of what she has done? Anna’s anguish as she weighs up her choices forces us to consider the profundity of such a decision and underlines the difficulty of trying to live up to the expectations that society has created.

“We want life to be perfect, and it ain’t,” concludes Olesen. “None of us is going to go through life without suffering, somehow.” 

Originally published in The Times, 2005

Lars von Trier: "I am not Mel Gibson"

Lars von Trier stunned the media in Cannes with his comments about Jews and Nazis. But what did he really mean?

Danish cinema's not-so-enfant terrible, Lars von Trier, came to Cannes this year trailing Melancholia, a beautifully mounted apocalyptic drama, which, compared to his previous cinematic assault, Antichrist, had all the shock value of a children's tea party.

There was no graphic sex, no horrific close up of clitoral self-mutilation, no violence - just an extremely depressed heroine, convincingly played by Hollywood actress Kirsten Dunst, essentially willing on the end of the world. The most shocking thing about Melancholia was that it wasn't shocking.

This time, it was up to Von Trier to personally up the ante at the now notorious post-screening press conference that sent shock waves along the Croisette. Seemingly unable to control himself, the filmmaker embarked on a series of rambling answers about the link between German Romanticism - which he was playing with in Melancholia - and the Third Reich, during which he declared that he was not a Jew but a Nazi, and that he understood Hitler.

Some journalists took the director at his word and branded him an anti-Semite. The festival itself pronounced him "persona non grata" and banned him from coming within 100 metres of the Palais and red carpet. It was a swift and dramatic fall from grace for Von Trier, whose musical, Dancer in the Dark, won the Palme d'Or in 2000.

Taken literally, his comments were shocking and bizarre. Even during the press conference, though, it was clear that his meaning was being misinterpreted. What was missing was the context.

When he talked about not being a Jew, Von Trier was actually refering to his mother's deathbed confession that the Jewish man he had grown up believing was his father, Ulf Trier, wasn't in fact, and that his biological father was really her boss, a German by the name of Fritz Michael Hartmann. But why, I asked him recently, had he used such provocative language?

"A German, in slang in Denmark, is called Nazi," he explained. "So I was not a Jew, I was a Nazi. Not meaning I was a Nazi, meaning I was a German. Which was, of course, stupid. It's a matter of me putting things in a forum where they shouldn't have been."

Clearly stung by the charge of anti-Semitism, he said: "Everybody that knows me, knows that I have a very, very famous Danish Jewish name. All my children have Jewish names . . . I am not Mel Gibson, I am the opposite. I have been through all these f****** concentration camps and I think that the Holocaust is the worst crime against humanity that, in my knowledge, has ever been."

By saying that he understood Hitler, he did not mean that he condoned what the Nazi leader did, he said. On the contrary, he was acknowledging the dictator's humanity and, albeit weakly, trying to imply the risk of not recognising some of his qualities in ourselves.

"It is extremely easy to say that [what happened] is Hitler's fault and that, I think, is dangerous for all of us. I still say there is a little bit of a Nazi in all of us, somewhere. And that's not Hitler's fault. He used it. If it hadn't been him, then there would have been somebody else."

Whatever his real intention, the director's long links with Cannes now look to have been damaged beyond repair. He said he is sad because of his long friendship with the event's president, Gilles Jacob. On the other hand, having taken every one of his films to the festival, he no longer feels a pressure to finish a movie in time for Cannes. As for being persona non grata:

"My parents would be so proud of me," he laughs. "I mean, I am a kind of persona non grata deep down in my soul. But this was a stupid way of becoming it."

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/stephen-applebaum/lars-von-trier-explains-t_b_971546.html

Melancholia opens 30 September