The candler blog is based in New York City and is still in it’s first year, so when I went to the airport to buy my ticket to the French Riviera but could only hand them the lint in my pockets, I was rebuffed and sent back to my Manhattan abode. So yeah, I’m not at Cannes reporting on the biggest film news in the world, but we certainly can get some work done at a safe distance, no? Let’s gather some of the noise and make a little story about it. With me? Here goes…
Last week, the latest film from the ineffable Lars Von Trier, Antichrist, screened at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, apparently causing the international film community to synchronously blush and squirm on the edge their seats. The internets are aflutter with talk about how great/sexy/violent/evil/awful/awesome the movie is. Is anyone surprised that Mr. Von Trier is once again a polarizing figure in cinema? What were you expecting?
An original member of the Scandinavian Dogme 95 collective, Lars Von Trier is one of the group’s most illustrious ex-pats. He made a real impact in the U.S. with his video musical Dancer in the Dark, starring Björk and Catherine Deneuve. After recieving flack for making a film critiquing North American lifestyles (Dancer takes place in Canada) without ever having visited the continent, the director responded defiantly with Dogville, a grandiose experiment set in 1930s America. For some reason, every time you come close to pinpointing exactly what kind of filmmaker Mr. Von Trier is, he eludes you, sidestepping any label and making something completely unexpected.
I don’t want to talk about his newest film or the headier work mentioned above. I want to talk about Lars Von Trier, the unabashed trickster. Read on…