I've been huffing Lars Von Trier movies lately. Poll time.

I assume there's some Kingdom love out there tho.

Melancholia was good. I marginally liked Antichrist. So with those two and The Five Obstructions, I now like three of his films.

I've just been to see this. I liked it!

if von trier wants to chuck a planet at the international high middle class to see what happens, then I'm ok with that. a study of extreme death & isolation in the face of socially constructed happiness and achievement.

needed his typical humour.

I liked when after the mother's incredibly bitter speech about marriage there was some scattered applause. that was my favourite bit.

'melancholia' as a high concept sounds fantastic to me; i'm not sure as to whether it's a film i want this particular dude to have made though

also, is gainsbourg the first actress to appear in > 1 film of his

i liked melancholia but im a bit of a lvt apologist, thought the set up of dunst's character vs gainsbourg's character as sisters & how they differently cope w/ whats impending was interesting. i generally like dunst a lot but i didnt really think she was partic amazing here, who else of note could have won best actress @ cannes?

looks like melodramia to me

I really could care less about Lars Von Trier or any of his films. I have liked things about them, but he basically seems like a total dork and I doubt I would watch any more of his work unless I was bored and they were the only thing available.

Loved the concept of Melancholia but really wasn't very moved by it. Also the Wagner everywhere pumped up to the hilt was clumsily used and ended up being really oppressive.

"Marcel Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' has a 30-page discussion of what is the greatest work of art of all time. Proust reaches the conclusion that it's the overture to Wagner's 'Tristan and Isolde', so that's what we pour all over this film, pushing it for all it's got. I haven't used so much music in a film since 'The Element of Crime' (from 1984, ed.), but here we wallow in it. It's kind of fun, actually. For years, there has been this sort of unofficial film dogma not to cut to the music. Don't cut on the beat. It's considered crass and vulgar. But that's just what we do in 'Melancholia'. When the horns come in and out in Wagner's overture, we cut right on the beat. It's kind of like a music video that way. It's supposed to be vulgar. That was our declared intention. It's one of the most pleasurable things I've done in a long time.

http://www.dfi.dk/Service/English/News-and-publications/FILM-Magazine/Artikler-fra-tidsskriftet-FILM/72/The-Only-Redeeming-Factor-is-the-World-Ending.aspx

God I want to take an apprenticeship with this guy. I would do * anything.

watched this last night (it is on iTunes for anyone looking for it). I thought it was very good; I didn't like it as much as Dogville which remains my favorite of his films. It's certainly incredibly beautiful. Keifer Sutherland is a fucker.

Really intrigued by what I've read of "Melancholia," which makes that the first time a Von Trier movie has made me want to see it since ... ""Breaking the Waves?" Ever since then I've known better, since this guy is like a cinematic cancer (which I feel is an aptly Von Trier-ian description). But this new one, I dunno. If I didn't know better, the concept seems appealing. Though of course I know better, which means I know I will leave the theatre hating myself, everyone else but most of all hating Von Trier with renewed vigor. Call it the Von Trier paradox.

Ha. Also stayed away after Breaking The Waves but went to see this one last night and enjoyed it.

I'm encouraged since Amy Taubin says this is the first film by him she didn't hate.

It's good!

I was underwhelmed! It was pretty much Antichrist mk ii w/ swapped-out genre signifiers. And not as bracing. And about 40min. too long.

Really? I liked Antichrist (one of the three LvT films I do) but it felt like an elaborate joke. I think there's a real honesty in Melancholia that I find missing in most of his work. I think the ending is great and oddly human for him, which is why I wasn't surprised to find out he wished he had changed it because it felt too soft.

I find Melancholia to be the sillier movie. I realize that's a minority opinion.

I liked the way in the first half it was a Scandinavian family festival gone awry mixed with Antonioni-ennui with Kirsten Dunst in the Monica Vitti role and then it turned into a different movie so that the first half was partly in quotes.

Melancholia's only my second Von Trier film (I still have great memories of how audacious the musical interludes in Breaking the Waves were). The opening section will stay in my mind for a while, I'm sure. Once the film proper started, it held my interest for a while--Rachel Getting Married, more or less, however different their origins may be--then got really dragged-out towards the middle. (When I saw my friend starting to nod off, I nudged him and said, "Wake up, they're just about to get to the big prison break.") The final section works fine; genuinely frightening, and ultimately very sad. Much to my surprise, both the prologue and the ending are on YouTube. I'm going to show a couple minutes of the former to my class tomorrow, and even be rotten enough to show them the ending. (They won't mind at all--last year, when I showed the opening of Kane, they begged me to tell them what Rosebud was. I wouldn't.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaNoM_QTDns&feature=related

fuck

antichrist was absolutely the worst piece of shit fuck cunt crap i'd seen in ten years. but then i saw that rom-com with ryan gosling as a slick well dressed hustler and that was even worse.

I liked the way in the first half it was a Scandinavian family festival gone awry mixed with Antonioni-ennui with Kirsten Dunst in the Monica Vitti role and then it turned into a different movie so that the first half was partly in quotes.

this is about right!

even down to Dunst in extreme long shot getting fucked on a gulf course

A couple days ago I watched Von Trier's earliest known work... a stop-motion animated short from 1967 called "The Trip to Squash Land" --- every Von Trier movie derives from it, sorta.

Screenshots to follow

Little Lars Trier hadn't yet taken the "von" affectation

http://www.quartzcity.net/images/TurenTilSquashland0001.jpg
http://www.quartzcity.net/images/TurenTilSquashland0002.jpg
http://www.quartzcity.net/images/TurenTilSquashland0003.jpg

Three rabbits frolic around Squashland

http://www.quartzcity.net/images/TurenTilSquashland0004.jpg

"Oh yeah? This is Squashland! Beware!"

http://www.quartzcity.net/images/TurenTilSquashland0005.jpg

"LA LA LA! We don't care!"

http://www.quartzcity.net/images/TurenTilSquashland0006.jpg

"Do you really want to know?"

http://www.quartzcity.net/images/TurenTilSquashland0007.jpg

Super Sausage seems to be ineffectual...

http://www.quartzcity.net/images/TurenTilSquashland0008.jpg

Hey, one rabbit is missing!

http://www.quartzcity.net/images/TurenTilSquashland0009.jpg

?????? WTF?

http://www.quartzcity.net/images/TurenTilSquashland0010.jpg

The end

On a serious note, the "Justine" chapter's assured tone and pace almost compensated for risible ideas that (a) only Von Trier could conceive (Justine's boss asking her to think of taglines on a wedding night. REALLY?!) and (b) only a male director can conceive (e.g. Justine can release her existential angst only by fucking on a golf course and acting like Kirsten Dunst).

Still, I don't get the complaints about Dunst -- she's one of those actresses who's excellent at projecting sensuality. Charlotte Gainsborough is the rotten egg here. After this and I'm Not There she's cornered the market on bourgeois sourness.

as far as apocalyptic dramas go I prefer Take Shelter.

im not sure as to the ultimate worth of Melancholia but it struck me as kind of remarkable as a defense of depression as a certain kind of truth, or a way of knowing. i can't remember the exact words, but Dunst says something to the effect of "I know things."

Von Trier said several times that he found himself bored mid-way through Melancholia and it shows. The second half (despite looking great) was just a mess of histrionics from Gainsbourg and Sutherland and by the end I was muttering DIAA (die in an apocalypse). Thought Dunst was great...

I didn't mind Sutherland one bit; that raspy voice is good at sardonic remarks.

sutherland was awesome in this! he kept owning the shit out of everyone

i think i said in another thread that i found this to be pretty minor, but not bad. i was really into some of the imagery, like the shot of the two 'moons' lighting the courtyard

Really? I was so happy when Sutherland finally left the movie.

http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/80/a8/06029ea745fb9ff17ed1531aa0ca/nympomaniac-character-posters.png

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/which-is-your-favorite-check-out-the-beautifully-strange-character-posters-for-nymphomaniac-20131010

And, for posterity:

http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/a5/e4/5213fecc4da1ab6c6e38b1641d5f/characters-udo.jpg

stoked for this. i think von trier's last two movies have been his best.

smelling lars von trier movies?

Well, this one would be an interesting one to huff, yeah.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e9/Scanners.jpg

20 Seconds.
You Explode.

Sorry. This never happened to me before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSOONAsCG0U

nws

He's gone Colonel Kurtz

http://multimedia.pol.dk/archive/00894/trier-14_894972y.jpg

(English summary: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/28/lars-von-trier-i-was-addicted-to-drugs-and-alcohol)

Lars von Trier has revealed that he is undergoing treatment for drugs and alcohol addiction. Speaking to the newspaper Politiken, the Danish film director reported that he is now clean and attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings daily.

In his first major interview since a self-imposed vow of silence following his controversial comments expressing empathy for Adolf Hitler in 2011, the director, 58, said almost all his films had been written under the influence.

Von Trier explained he felt a daily bottle of vodka helped him enter a “parallel world” necessary for creation and that coming off both alcohol and drugs might mean he could only produce “shitty films”.

Von Trier has before spoken of previous struggles with depression. In the interview, he expresses scepticism about the potential value of any future work, as well as his capacity to produce it.

“I don’t know if I can make any more films, and that worries me,” he said. “There is no creative expression of artistic value that has ever been produced by ex-drunkards and ex-drug-addicts. Who the hell would bother with a Rolling Stones without booze or with a Jimi Hendrix without heroin?”

There's A Tasteless Shakey Cam Joke In This Somewhere...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/feb/12/lars-von-trier-admitted-to-a-care-centre-following-parkinsons-diagnosis

Danish film-maker Lars von Trier, who has Parkinson’s disease, has been admitted to a care centre, his production company said on Wednesday.

One of the biggest names in contemporary auteur cinema, Von Trier has directed more than 14 feature films, often disturbing and violent.

“Lars is currently associated with a care centre that can provide him with the treatment and care his condition requires,” Zentropa producer Louise Vesth posted on Instagram.
“It’s a complement to his own private accommodation. Lars is doing well under the circumstances,” she added, lamenting the “need to pass on very personal information” following speculation in the Danish media.

Von Trier made public his diagnosis in 2022, when he was aged 66.