Nymphomaniac

Lars Von Trier – Denmark – 2013

Lars Von Trier is a big phony for one simple reason; he faces no risk whatsoever in making his “transgressive” films.  He knows that no one who could be startled or offended by his films are ever going to see them.  His audience is an agnostic, cosmopolitan professional class quite accustomed to extreme material in art films.  This amounts to little more than preaching to the choir… (or snake-oil salesmanship, depending on how charitable you want to be).  Von Trier is also a hypocrite for boasting of presenting a hard-hitting drama about neurotic sexuality and that the sex in it is there because it’s important, not because he would stoop to titillating an audience.  The gimmick selling-point of Nymphomaniac since it was announced was that some famous actors would be performing real sex acts on camera, or – as it turns out – pretending to perform real sex acts.  It seems that once the hype died down, some of his cast – or their agents – weren’t quite as adventurous as originally advertised and the sex scenes were augmented by special effects and body doubles; exactly as in the mainstream movies Von Trier claims to despise.  (I suppose that’s why Mr. Dogma 95 stocked the cast with as many American stars as he could manage.)  Von Trier is the high-priest of a trendy, smarmy, European, nihilistic streak in film that – in my opinion – is not conducive to great art but amounts to ponderous and pretentious glop, characterized by bleak soullessness masquerading as gritty realism.  (His confederates are Michael Haneke, Catherine Breillat and Gaspar Noé.)  By excising the spiritual component from their lives and work, filmmakers like Von Trier leave nothing in its place but the void.  Craving sensation to dull the echo in this void, he and his audience are too intellectually proud to indulge in blatant pornography, which – god forbid – may actually present sex as healthy and joyous instead of ugly and fraught with anguish.  Nymphomaniac is hollow, colorless and unappealing in every way possible.  Yes, art can be many things, but at the very least it should draw people to it, not repel and annoy them.  I admit to approaching the film expecting to hate it but I was also perfectly willing to be pleasantly surprised.  I was an enthusiastic admirer of a handful of past Von Trier films, especially Zentropa (1992) and The Kingdom (1994), but the director remains content to stay on the path already beaten flat in more recent works like the reprehensible Dogville (2003) and the vile Antichrist (2009).   Von Trier should either stop making films or die.  If he is really as miserable as he pretends to be, suicide is a much more admirable solution than the films he makes.  Am I simply a narrow-minded Philistine when it comes to movies?  Maybe; but here are some lengthy, blasphemous, challenging or otherwise provocative films that I consider among my favorites: Carl Dreyer’s Ordet, Andy Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls, Paul Morrissey’s Flesh, Ken Russell's The Devils, John Waters’ Pink Flamingos, Jean Eustache’s The Mother & the Whore, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, William Friedkin's Cruising, Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse, Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant, David Cronenberg’s Crash, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, Terry Gilliam’s Tideland.  These are all films that use artistic style, humor or sheer passion to deal with the same existential turmoil that consumes Von Trier, and are therefore rewarding instead of depressing.  Lazy and bitter in late-middle-age, pathetically riddled with a multitude of phobias, frantic to be seen as cutting edge, Lars Von Trier apparently feels entitled to endless applause for taking four or five hours to say “life sucks.”  Worst of all, by identifying female sexual desire in almost any form as deranged and degrading, Von Trier may have produced what I consider to be one of the most chauvinistic films ever.  Finally, I’m reminded of the great Ken Russell’s mission statement: “Life is too short to make destructive films about people one doesn’t like.  My films are meant to be constructive and illuminating.”  God, where are Ken Russell, Russ Meyer and Federico Fellini when we need them?; filmmakers with a zest for life and who rejoiced in presenting full-figured, lusty and confident women fully able to enjoy their sexuality with none of the dismal angst that is Von Trier’s bread and butter.