TGI... whatevs
Lately it seems that every day I spend in the library it ends up pouring rain. I guess it's just as well to be in the library again. Glad to have a weekend upon me because if nothing else, it means a few days away from work, and that's always, unquestionably, a good thing. I wrapped up my week on old Hollywood and am glad to begin next week anew, talking about foreign cinema and as I hope, getting more out of it, having more to say and teaching these pupils a thing or two. With Hollywood it's always a matter of me regurgitating biographical facts about the stars they grew up with. I can't say that much is gained, but next week I hope to do some French cinema (New Wave, Left Bank), Italian Neo-realism and a day on Kurosawa and Japan. Should be good.
I also had a somewhat easy week at my office job. My boss is on vacation so I didn't have to be in the office as much as last week. There I am anxious to move onto the next phase of the project - having finished writing letters, drafts and press kits, I am ready to do my mail merge, send these little puppies out into the world and then deal with follow-up.
Life is going pretty well, back at the ranch. Eric got back from the East Coast this week and I am jealous of his RI-style suntan. In honor of his return, I cooked a vegetarian feast and went out for too many alcoholic beverages. I spent yesterday recovering. I needed a four-hour midday nap yesterday to undo the damage. But I did finally finish watching
Mystic River, which I enjoyed, but not quite as much as I expected to on account of all of the hype and the liberal handing out of Oscars to the cast. I think Clint Eastwood makes movies for men, when it really comes down to it. Also, I watched MR in three sections, broken up artificially by my schedule, whim and unpredictable tiredness. It's not really a fair shake.
Going to see Lars von Trier's
Five Obstructions tonight, for the second time - but I liked it so much I don't care, at Cinematheque. Although there will probably be formatting issues (this happen when I copy text from MS Word, but I wrote the program notes for the screening, I'll post them below in case you have any questions about Dogme95.
After many bottles of wine, on Monday, March 13, 1995 in Copenhagen, Lars von Trier conspired with another promising Dane director, Thomas Vinterberg, and penned the naughty and infamous Dogme95 manifesto. Among other decrees, the manifesto established ten core rules for all Dogme filmmakers to follow. Soren Kragh-Jacobsen and Kristian Levring (documentarian Anne Wivel quit the group almost immediately) signed on with the von Trier / Vinterberg team, forming the Dogme core.
By no stretch of the imagination, Dogme, in part, picks up where the French New Wave left off. Pledging a revolution of both form and content, the manifesto announces the failings of Jean-Luc Godard and others insofar as "the anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois." With their approach, von Trier and Vinterberg have sworn a "vow of chastity." The rules unforgivingly demand the use of location shooting (no props or sets may be brought in), and allow for the use of a hand-held camera, permitting no special lighting / film effects. The restrain on content forbid the making of genre movies and curse plots with superficial actions (such as murder).
The Dogme95 manifesto aims to cure the ailing contemporary cinema, so hepped up on sugary beautiful images and tired contrived plots it can hardly see straight. In its place, von Trier puts forth a cinema championing his own brand of realism, of which he has said, "my supreme goal is to get the truth out of my characters and settings," and often with von Trier, he gets it "the hard way." His reputation as a punishing and cruel director precedes him – many revere his eccentric demands, on and off the set, as torture.
Like the beginnings of
The Five Obstructions project, the Dogme95 manifesto was created via the not-so-secret recipe of vodka, cinephillic tendencies, mischievous humor and von Trier's sadistic love of rules (and breaking them). Famously, a drunk von Trier littered Cannes audiences with the printed manifesto shortly after its completion.
Beyond the printed page, the Dogme film movement continued to gain steam and legitimacy throughout the 1990s with films such as
Breaking the Waves (1996) and
The Idiots (1998). Internationally, von Trier's works have been well-received for their unique visual style and engaging narratives. All of his features have been shown at the Cannes Film Festival, where they have garnished seven prizes, including the Palme d'Or for
Dancer in the Dark (2000).
The premise behind Dogme's first non-fiction feature was presented by von Trier in a email to his mentor, Jorgen Leth, a long-time professor at the Danish Film School in Copenhagen and noted filmmaker of Denmark's experimental film movement in the 1960s. Von Trier's cat-and-mouse challenge centers on Leth's 1967 short
The Perfect Human, a black and white 12-minute film displaying Leth's signature style - restrained, distant and aloof.
Perhaps recalling the set of Dogme rules, von Trier promises Leth a mixed bag of "limitations, commands and prohibitions" associated with re-making the short. Never suggesting that the task would be easy, the Danish title (De fam benspoend) has the connotation of "tripping," and other child-like pranks, Leth rose to the occasion, responding:
I really like the idea about having to change, adjust, and reduce according to given conditions in the process. So we are entering a game -- but not a sweet child's game. It will be full of traps and vicious turn... You now want me to deconstruct it (to use a word that Woody Allen used).
Fatefully, he signed the email "I accept the challenge," and
The Five Obstructions chases the ramification of Leth's decision. Throughout the film Leth retains a good-sport’s spirit of challenge and love of the game. Casually and magnificently he lobs back a gentlemanly pass in response to each of von Trier’s stinging fastballs of parameters and restrictions. At times the line between challenger, challenge and the challenged is blurred – but as always the guarded and exacting von Trier, one will never know if he didn't plan it this way all along.
posted by lmjasinski at 12:56 PM
