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Contemporary Film Directors
Lars von Trier
Scandinavia's foremost living auteur and the catalyst of the Dogme95 movement, Lars von Trier is arguably world cinema's most confrontational and polarizing figure. Willfully devastating audiences, he takes risks few filmmakers would conceive, mounting projects that somehow transcend the grand follies they narrowly miss becoming. Challenging conventional limitations and imposing his own rules, he restlessly reinvents the film language. The Danish director has therefore cultivated an insistently transnational cinema, taking inspiration from sources that range from the European avant-garde to American genre films.
This volume provides a stimulating overview of Trier's career while focusing on the more recent work, including his controversial Gold Heart Trilogy ( Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, and Dancer in the Dark ), the as-yet unfinished USA Trilogy ( Dogville and Manderlay ), and individual projects such as the comedy The Boss of It All and the incendiary horror psychodrama Antichrist. Closely analyzing the films and their contexts, Linda Badley draws on a range of cultural references and critical approaches, including genre, gender, and cultural studies, performance theory, and trauma culture. Two revealing interviews that Trier granted during crucial stages of Antichrist 's development are also included.
This volume provides a stimulating overview of Trier's career while focusing on the more recent work, including his controversial Gold Heart Trilogy ( Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, and Dancer in the Dark ), the as-yet unfinished USA Trilogy ( Dogville and Manderlay ), and individual projects such as the comedy The Boss of It All and the incendiary horror psychodrama Antichrist. Closely analyzing the films and their contexts, Linda Badley draws on a range of cultural references and critical approaches, including genre, gender, and cultural studies, performance theory, and trauma culture. Two revealing interviews that Trier granted during crucial stages of Antichrist 's development are also included.
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216 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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August 26, 2022[Saved from my writing section]
I've always been fascinated by the Saint Teresa legend. If your average person had gone around saying she'd been having sex with Jesus, she'd have been locked up or burned at the stake or something. Teresa became a Saint of the Church. That's pretty cool.
It occurred to me the other day that this was typical von Trier territory. If he wants to adapt the following idea and make a movie out it, that's fine with me.
Teresa: an elevator pitch
Teresa, an independent film maker, is depressed after a series of reverses; she's broken up with her long-term lover, her latest film has been panned by the critics, she's in financial difficulties. She's tired of life. Late at night, in a New York bar, she tells her story to a random stranger and asks him how she should kill herself.
They're both drunk, and they've been talking about her name; she's from a Catholic family, and she's christened after the saint. Mostly in jest, he suggests a bizarre version of Death by Cop. She's to make a pornographic film about her famous namesake, which explicitly shows Saint Teresa, just as she's supposed to do in the legend, having sex with Jesus. If it's done tastelessly and visibly enough, some religious nut is bound to shoot her.
The next day, Teresa wakes up with an appalling hangover. Some of the evening is hard to reconstruct, but she clearly remembers the conversation in the bar. The idea somehow appeals to her. She does some googling and starts making phone calls; soon she has the whole plan worked out. There's a Bible Belt town that's ideal. Two abortion doctors have been shot there, and the local school board unanimously passed a resolution to ban teaching of evolution (their decision was later overturned). If it's not going to work in this place, it won't work anywhere. She hunts around some more and hires the tackiest erotic actress she can find to play Saint Teresa, an equally tacky guy to play Jesus, and a few more sleazeballs to do camera and lighting. She's going to write the script herself.
They turn up in the town, where they've rented an old farm to do the shooting. Teresa makes sure that the story is leaked in good time. By the second day, they're getting hostile looks everywhere they go. She feels the plan is well on track. There are plenty of crazy people around, and it's mainly a question of who's going to get there first. She is strangely calm. The actors and crew, who are not too bright, appear blissfully unaware of what's coming.
On the third day they receive an uninvited visitor. He's carrying an assault rifle, two handguns, and over a hundred rounds of ammunition. The door isn't even locked and he walks right in. They're in the middle of filming a sex scene (well, the whole movie is nothing but sex scenes). The lead actress is naked except a nun's veil, kneeling in front of her co-star. He's just come all over her face.
The visitor points his gun at her, and then something weird happens. Instead of freaking out, the actress is completely unafraid. She gets slowly to her feet, looking directly at him. Suddenly he no longer sees her as an ageing slut with fake tits. She is wreathed in majesty, a halo around her head. He puts the gun down on the ground and moves closer, as if in a dream. She continues to look into his eyes. He prostrates himself before her and kisses her feet. He begs her to forgive him for what he was about to do and promises her lifelong devotion. She regally accepts. No one can understand what's happening, but from then on the would-be assassin follows her around like a dog, waiting on her every command.
Word of the miracle gets around. At the end of the week, when they're wrapping up, the mayor drops by. He's very polite. All he wants, he says, is for the townfolk to be able to see the movie. Teresa agrees.
The venue is packed, standing room only. It seems like the whole town is trying to get in - men, women and children. When they switch on the projector you can hear a pin drop, despite the crowd. It's nothing but wall-to-wall fucking, but people are weeping quietly. At the end, they just sit in stunned silence. Many people go up to Teresa and shake her hand, or timidly hug her.
The following day, the Carmelite nunnery in the nearby town receives four applications from women who had been at the screening. The day after, there are six more. The day after that, a further ten. The story spreads quickly. National media get hold of it. A major studio offers to buy the movie for a staggering sum. Teresa asks for a large cut of the gross, and they immediately give it to her before someone else comes in with a better offer. They put the PR machine into overdrive and let the country know that they'll be opening in two weeks, on six thousand screens.
At the premiere in New York, Teresa and the stars of the movie are given the full red-carpet treatment. They're just entering the movie theater when she sees someone in the crowd that she can't quite place. Then she realises. It's the guy from the bar, the one that gave her the original idea. He's pointing a gun at her. He fires. The mob immediately tear him to pieces; no one ever knows why he did it. They rush her to hospital, but she's pronounced dead on arrival.
A quarter of a million people attend her funeral.
The movie goes on to break every box office record in existence. Teresa's will, written the day before she died, turns out to bequeath all her estate to a new charitable foundation whose rules she has specified in minute detail. It's impossible to understand how she found time to draft them. Many of the people who work for it are nuns. Their happiness and radiant well-being become a byword. People sometimes make off-colour jokes, which they invariably accept with a smile.
God moves in mysterious ways.
I've always been fascinated by the Saint Teresa legend. If your average person had gone around saying she'd been having sex with Jesus, she'd have been locked up or burned at the stake or something. Teresa became a Saint of the Church. That's pretty cool.
It occurred to me the other day that this was typical von Trier territory. If he wants to adapt the following idea and make a movie out it, that's fine with me.
Teresa: an elevator pitch
Teresa, an independent film maker, is depressed after a series of reverses; she's broken up with her long-term lover, her latest film has been panned by the critics, she's in financial difficulties. She's tired of life. Late at night, in a New York bar, she tells her story to a random stranger and asks him how she should kill herself.
They're both drunk, and they've been talking about her name; she's from a Catholic family, and she's christened after the saint. Mostly in jest, he suggests a bizarre version of Death by Cop. She's to make a pornographic film about her famous namesake, which explicitly shows Saint Teresa, just as she's supposed to do in the legend, having sex with Jesus. If it's done tastelessly and visibly enough, some religious nut is bound to shoot her.
The next day, Teresa wakes up with an appalling hangover. Some of the evening is hard to reconstruct, but she clearly remembers the conversation in the bar. The idea somehow appeals to her. She does some googling and starts making phone calls; soon she has the whole plan worked out. There's a Bible Belt town that's ideal. Two abortion doctors have been shot there, and the local school board unanimously passed a resolution to ban teaching of evolution (their decision was later overturned). If it's not going to work in this place, it won't work anywhere. She hunts around some more and hires the tackiest erotic actress she can find to play Saint Teresa, an equally tacky guy to play Jesus, and a few more sleazeballs to do camera and lighting. She's going to write the script herself.
They turn up in the town, where they've rented an old farm to do the shooting. Teresa makes sure that the story is leaked in good time. By the second day, they're getting hostile looks everywhere they go. She feels the plan is well on track. There are plenty of crazy people around, and it's mainly a question of who's going to get there first. She is strangely calm. The actors and crew, who are not too bright, appear blissfully unaware of what's coming.
On the third day they receive an uninvited visitor. He's carrying an assault rifle, two handguns, and over a hundred rounds of ammunition. The door isn't even locked and he walks right in. They're in the middle of filming a sex scene (well, the whole movie is nothing but sex scenes). The lead actress is naked except a nun's veil, kneeling in front of her co-star. He's just come all over her face.
The visitor points his gun at her, and then something weird happens. Instead of freaking out, the actress is completely unafraid. She gets slowly to her feet, looking directly at him. Suddenly he no longer sees her as an ageing slut with fake tits. She is wreathed in majesty, a halo around her head. He puts the gun down on the ground and moves closer, as if in a dream. She continues to look into his eyes. He prostrates himself before her and kisses her feet. He begs her to forgive him for what he was about to do and promises her lifelong devotion. She regally accepts. No one can understand what's happening, but from then on the would-be assassin follows her around like a dog, waiting on her every command.
Word of the miracle gets around. At the end of the week, when they're wrapping up, the mayor drops by. He's very polite. All he wants, he says, is for the townfolk to be able to see the movie. Teresa agrees.
The venue is packed, standing room only. It seems like the whole town is trying to get in - men, women and children. When they switch on the projector you can hear a pin drop, despite the crowd. It's nothing but wall-to-wall fucking, but people are weeping quietly. At the end, they just sit in stunned silence. Many people go up to Teresa and shake her hand, or timidly hug her.
The following day, the Carmelite nunnery in the nearby town receives four applications from women who had been at the screening. The day after, there are six more. The day after that, a further ten. The story spreads quickly. National media get hold of it. A major studio offers to buy the movie for a staggering sum. Teresa asks for a large cut of the gross, and they immediately give it to her before someone else comes in with a better offer. They put the PR machine into overdrive and let the country know that they'll be opening in two weeks, on six thousand screens.
At the premiere in New York, Teresa and the stars of the movie are given the full red-carpet treatment. They're just entering the movie theater when she sees someone in the crowd that she can't quite place. Then she realises. It's the guy from the bar, the one that gave her the original idea. He's pointing a gun at her. He fires. The mob immediately tear him to pieces; no one ever knows why he did it. They rush her to hospital, but she's pronounced dead on arrival.
A quarter of a million people attend her funeral.
The movie goes on to break every box office record in existence. Teresa's will, written the day before she died, turns out to bequeath all her estate to a new charitable foundation whose rules she has specified in minute detail. It's impossible to understand how she found time to draft them. Many of the people who work for it are nuns. Their happiness and radiant well-being become a byword. People sometimes make off-colour jokes, which they invariably accept with a smile.
God moves in mysterious ways.
November 20, 2012
Workmanlike collection of tidbits, trivia, interview quotes from Trier et al. and a bit, not enough, of smart analysis of the individual films; Badley teaches film and obviously has theoretical/critical knowledge at her fingertips, and I wish we'd just gotten to read some pure essays by her on these movies. Especially worthwhile for her two interviews at the end with Trier as he's filming Antichrist. She's best on DitD and BtW.
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