Denmark's Cinema Verité

Denmark's Cinema Verité

Caution: watching contemporary Danish films may induce dizziness and nausea and provoke a mild depression (or, if you prefer, a newfound understanding of the human capacity for evil). Whatever your take, it's the type of cinema that's hard to take sitting down, even with a tub of buttered popcorn in your lap. Denmark's bad boy of film is Lars von Trier, who has been called "bold, angry, and defiant" by one critic, and "ineptitude coupled with arrogance" by another. His best-known films include Dancer in the Dark (2000) starring the Icelandic singer Björk, Breaking the Waves (1996) with actress Emily Watson, and Europa (1991) for which von Trier won the Palm d'Or prize at Cannes. His latest movie, Dogville (2003), starred Nicole Kidman, Lauren Bacall, and James Caan.

Von Trier is also the founder of Dogma 95, a union of Danish filmmakers who took a collective "Vow of Chastity" in 1995 to eschew modern (read: Hollywood) filmmaking methods and get back to the basics -- handheld cameras instead of tripods, and no artificial lighting, special effects, or dubbed-in musical scores. The result, both in content and in camera angles, has been moving -- some would say stomach-churning -- to say the least. A hyggelig (cozy) evening turns hellish in the 1998 film The Celebration, directed by Dogma 95 cofounder Thomas Vinterberg. Something in this disturbing tale clicked with worldwide audiences, because the film won the Special Jury prize at Cannes and screened in both the mainstream and art house circuits to great acclaim. The tagline could well have been lifted straight from Shakespeare's Hamlet, that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark." What starts out as a refined, candlelit celebration for the father's 60th birthday soon degenerates into accusations and innuendo. Vinterberg shot the entire film with handheld cameras and used minimal extra lighting. The effect for the moviegoer is one of sitting right there at the dinner table, amid the tearful allegations and finger-pointing. That the audience is both participant and voyeur is, of course, exactly what Vinterberg intended.

Von Trier, Vinterberg, and their cronies hark from a rich cinematic tradition. Danish film blossomed in the 1930s with a spate of successful comedies and probing documentaries. The German occupation of Denmark from 1940 to 1945 proved to be a blessing in disguise for Danish cinema. All films from Allied countries were banned, giving rise to a proliferation of homegrown films. It was during the Occupation that Carl Theodor Dreyer, considered to be one of Denmark's most daring and brilliant filmmakers, solidified his already acclaimed filmic reputation with the making of Day of Wrath, an allegorical protest against the German invasion. Denmark's best-known contribution to the contemporary international film scene is director Bille August, who made a name for himself in the 1980s with a series of acclaimed films including, in 1987, Pelle the Conqueror, based on the novel by Danish author Martin Andersen Nexø.

Like any well-paced thriller, a surprise finale awaits: Von Trier is working on what he calls a "filmic monument" -- tentatively titled Dimension -- which he films a tiny part of each year. It's due for release in 2025 and, judging from his previous films, you won't want to miss it when it comes to a theater near you.