Nymphomaniac has arrived fresh from the mind of Lars von Trier, the (in)famous Danish director known for throwing everything that is horrible about humanity into a sausage-grinder and smearing that meaty ugliness beautifully into our faces. The film looks to be the next movie-going phenomenon – it’s been one of Flicks’ most viewed profiles for the last few months (thanks to you sleazy perves whom I love).
But here’s my own dirty little secret: I hadn’t seen a single Lars von Trier film. I needed to amend this before the impending release date, so I had little choice but to risk doing what few mortals have attempted: a Lars von Trier marathon.
I presented this kamikaze mission to my editor Steve Newall, who is a massive von Trierian. This didn’t sit well with him, fearing for my mental well-being. And he was right to be afraid – I’m a sensitive flower with delicate petals of optimism that can be easily plucked, which I guess would make von Trier some sort of… artistic… lawnmower… of hatred, I guess. With a shaky writing hand and a wry look in his eyes, he wrote down three films on the back of a business contact card to Lifeline and gave me a soldier’s farewell.
To begin such a feat, the wise move would be to ease one’s self into the marathon with one of von Trier’s less intense films. Instead, I started with Antichrist.
It was that uncomfortable von Trier experience I had previously spent my whole life avoiding, proving as much of a shock to me as it was to my flatmate, who walked away from the film after 10 minutes. She hasn’t looked me in the eyes since. Beginning with fully exposed sexual penetration in super slow-motion and ending with a [SPOILERS] testicle-crushing, clit-snipping, blood-jizzing view of depression, Antichrist burned an immovable imprint onto my corneas as if my eyes were a cow’s hide on von Trier’s cattle ranch.
But as full-on maleficent as Antichrist was, I was engrossed by it nonetheless. Its skewered examination of grief is horrifically cynical, but so unique and gorgeously realised that an artistic appreciation for its construction overrides the severity of its moral perspective, even if it’s conditioned me to cowering in the nearest corner whenever I see Charlotte Gainsbourg’s face. Luckily, that was never going to affect my viewing of Nymphomaniac, for I had already planned on sitting in the far back corner in an overcoat and heavily tinted sunglasses.
Melancholia was a breezier watch, in the same manner that a punch in the gut is less painful than a donkey kick to the face. I’ve recently begun to feel like we romanticise the End of the World too much, as if we’re all capable of finding love (Seeking a Friend for the End of the World) or even regain our lost sense of humanity (Children of Men) moments before our demise. It seems so elegant, and yet, I have often found myself wondering about that other side of the doomsday coin, the one where a cultural cesspool of assholes flail around in their own diskishness hours before their demise. I’ve wanted to see that graceless fiasco on screen, and boy did Lars von Trier deliver.
I saw the film as a race to accepting the inevitable, with Kirsten Dunst’s Justine beating Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Claire to the finish line before she even knew it was a sprint. Justine’s strangely inexplicable ability to “know things” probably helped her out, providing some much-needed knowledge to her throat-throttling, irritating behaviour at the wedding (not that her relatives were any better). I also saw it as a film about fabricating “perfect” moments – whether it’s a wedding or the final moments of humanity – and how we fudge them up, or disgustingly criticise others for fudging them up rather than trying to understand the incongruence.
There is no beauty in the characters’ behaviour. Instead, von Trier finds beauty in their misery and ultimate destruction, as shown in the eye-humping opening montage that foreshadows the entire film. Although I don’t share the film’s gruelling pessimism, I adored the way it presented its perspective nonetheless. Though seeing it after Antichrist left me contorted both emotionally and physically, not unlike a victim in The Ring.
The only film left on the marathon was The Boss of it All, Lars von Trier’s 2006 office comedy that I knew bugger-all about. This was my cushion film, the one intended to relieve me of the cynical sorrow of what came before – the LOLcats to my True Detective if you will. However, of the three films I was given, this was the one I found torturous, filled with esoteric humour that I assumed you had to be Danish to understand and a lead character who seemingly defused any potential punchline with non-committal responses.
Perhaps, given what I had just been through, my mood wasn’t ready to be switched on to ‘funny’ mode. Perhaps the ultra deadpan comedy didn’t mingle with my own sense of humour. And you shouldn’t take any of my criticisms seriously, for I turned it off after 26 minutes. However, I still say that counts towards achieving the marathon, and I still think that movie sucks.
Is that cheating? Yes. Does that wingeing, unjustified criticism make me a miserable excuse for a human being? Absolutely. And you know what? I think Uncle Lars would be proud of that fact.
