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43 out of 56 people found the following comment useful :- ambivalence unbounded, 28 December 2001 Author: cogs from (e.g. London, England)
I really liked The Idiots, I enjoyed it, found it interesting and it gave me a great deal to think about. But I also have major problems with it. Most of these issues have to do with the tenets of the Dogma Manifesto (although I don't know it off by heart, I am familiar with it) which smack of school-boy anarchy and have little to do with the true expansion of cinema's boundaries. However, I do like The Idiots, I really do. My main problem with the film and the manifesto is the assumption that Von Trier is pushing limits when he really isn't. It seems to be more of a publicity vehicle, a method for gaining notoriety rather than challenging the manner of representation. His transgressions are pretty infantile – formally we get a shaky camera, unfocused compositions, booms in shot (I mean, really ) and aberrant performances. Thematically we are confronted by perverse or repellent material and, horror of all horrors – images of copulating genitals. Rebellious? – has Von Trier ever seen any pornography? The truth is his so called transgressions are only transgressive to traditional mainstream representations so Von Trier is not challenging the limits of cinema but rather the paradigms of the mainstream. Now there's nothing wrong with that, that's good – Bunuel, Godard, Warhol, Waters – but for Christ sake just shut up and do it! Manifestos are for poseurs and unabombers – leave it to them and just get on making films. Here's an idea, for free form cinema try not making ANY rules. What I find most intriguing about The Idiots is how the thematic aspects so keenly reflect the filmmaker. The idea of a commune of pretentious sophisticates whose concept of transgressing the ghastly bourgeoisie is by confronting them with unpleasantness which plays on their traditional beliefs and desire for control is in my book the film's great irony. Also, for the most part Von Trier ought to be congratulated for exposing himself to such an obvious criticism. Although, unfortunately his representation of the middle-class characters who suffer the indignity of meeting the members of the commune as they are 'spazzing out' is strictly one-dimensional. Each of the other characters is mutli-dimensional and their participation in the activities and their conviction in it always remains complex. I think the final sequence is the film's major flaw – as it seems to me that Karen finds an inner grace as she seeks to break the shackles of middle-class society. This seems too pat, too handy a resolution which denies all of the complexity of her situation. Regardless of this, this is a very bold and very worthwhile film which has so much to offer.
35 out of 42 people found the following comment useful :- Great, 30 June 2000 Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN
While not quite at the same level as _Breaking the Waves_, the only other Lars von Trier I have seen (his films are quite hard to come by in Midwestern American video stores, you understand), _The Idiots_ is still a great film, and, in some ways, is just as important. I have to comment on a lot of the reviews I've seen for this movie. A lot of viewers judge the film by the theories and views about the group's existence (particularly the view spoken by the most outspoken of the Idiots, Stoffer). This is surely not the way von Trier meant his audience to take the film. If you paid any attention to the film, you'll notice that the Idiots' lifestyle is never glamorized. Everyone's experience in the group ends in embarrassment and despair. You should also note that none of the Idiots has the same opinion of why they like to act the idiot. Stoffer might say that they do it to upset the bourgeosie (I don't pretend to know how to spell that word), but the next person might be doing it just to play around. The artist (whose name escapes me at the moment) is doing it to become a better artist, and the doctor is doing it almost for experiment. There is never a reason for the groups' existence that the entire group agrees upon. This is extremely important for understanding this film.The way _The Idiots_ particularly hit me was in the characterizations. The actors are so great in this film that they hit the level of: "Is this really acting, or is it just being?" von Trier hit the same level in _Breaking the Waves_. These actors were so good, their characters just jumped out of the script. There are many characters, and only a few of them are characterized in the script extensively. Stoffer, although not the main character, is the most prominent character in the script. Many of the characters don't have all that many lines or screen time, but I felt I knew them all well.I also appreciated that it actually entertained me. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it so much. It is often very, very funny (if offensive). It also gripped me emotionally. I did not particularly comprehend the ending's meaning, but it left me with a powerful emotion. I did have tears in my eyes when I left the theater, and a lot of thoughts in my head. When a man outside the theater stopped me to ask me how I liked it, my lips and my brain were too dry to actually answer anything but, "I liked it. I liked it a lot." 9/10
24 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :- Astounding, brave, funny, touching., 7 July 2001 Author: INFOFREAKO from Perth, Australia
Look I know jack about Dogme, but I know what I like and I like 'The Idiots'! A LOT. I find it hard to understand how so much has been said about the "lack" of production values or the nudity in this movie, which to me aren't even worth mentioning, but hardly anyone comments about how astounding the ACTING is! The actors in this, and in Von Triers' previous 'Breaking The Waves', display completely realistic acting very rarely (if ever!) seen in Hollywood. So next time some Hollywood mediocre "actor" is up on the podium clutching their Oscar, force 'em to watch 'The Idiots' and see if they can pull off performances of this calibre! The "biker scene" in itself is one of the bravest, most funny/scary sequences I've ever seen in all my years of move watching!While I think all the actors involved are faultless, I would single out Jens Albinus as Stoffer as being particularly outstanding. I hope to see him go on to bigger and better things. I say "better", but you won't find many contemporary movies "better" than 'The Idiots'!
29 out of 39 people found the following comment useful :- One of Von Trier's best, 5 May 2001 Author: John Seal from Oakland CA
This misunderstood and wildly underappreciated film is up there with Riget and Zentropa in the Von Trier canon, and in my opinion better than Breaking the Waves. Critics focussed on the film's perceived cruel attitude towards the mentally handicapped. Idioterne is actually a very personal film about revolution, healing and Danish society's attitude towards the 'retarded'. It is an incredibly brave and moving film that will have you dabbing your eyes by the end. Whoever decided that American filmgoers could not be exposed to the sight of penises, however, needs to lose their job. The absurdity of being exposed to full frontal female nudity--while being protected by big black floating boxes whenever a John Thomas is on screen--is an outrage. Did someone REALLY think this film would break through at the box office if these appendages were obscured? Were they concerned that Joe Six Pack was going to take the wife and kids to that new movie by that famed Danish director that's such a big hit with the arthouse crowd? The mind boggles.
16 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :- "The Idiots" may be von Trier's best, 22 November 2001 Author: garveytv from Boston, MA
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
I have to admit I completely missed the mini-release of Lars von Trier's "The Idiots" last year - I even missed the release of the video! But I spotted it on the shelf last night, looking for something spiky to tide me over Thanksgiving, and I have to admit - it really did the job! This may be von Trier's best film, one in which he pretty much sheds the ponderous sexual melodrama that marred "Breaking the Waves" and "Dancer in the Dark".Of course, be warned - this is EURO independent cinema, not American, which means it has a GENUINE edge - it's hardcore, in more ways than one. If your idea of "edgy" or "dangerous" is "Being John Malkovich" or "Boys Don't Cry", then you should probably avoid the Dogma-driven "The Idiots", in which full-frontal nudity is de rigeur (and on-camera urination and sexual penetration occur as well).But if you want a funny, dirty, smart, irritating, and even infuriating satire of both the bourgeoisie and the bohemians who oppose it, then "The Idiots" is for you. von Trier has assembled a furiously talented cast of unknowns to spin this tale of a Danish commune that pretends - to the horror of the middle class masses that surround it - to be a private institution for "retards" and "spastics"."The Idiots" travel around town in their van, invading bourgeois precincts like restaurants and swimming pools, and then generally shaking things up; shedding all physical dignity, they begin drooling, picking their noses, disrobing, peeing, and messing with the personal space of the appalled citizenry.This is alternately funny, disgusting, and angering - but where the film becomes great is in its dissection of the bohemian mini-society that's perpetrating the big hoax. Led by the bitterly charismatic Stoffer, the rag-tag bunch is populated by the usual sexual misfits, mainstream drop-outs and screwed-up idealists, who are in complete denial of the personal failures that are driving their participation in the collective. The resulting scenes are instantly recognizable to anyone (like me) who's spent lengths of time in Bohemia - the irrational drift of the group's politics, the silly, self-serious conversations, the bickerings and territorial squabbles - in short, the bourgeois life writ small, only with more sex. (And believe me, it's a lot to pay for only a little more sex.)For me, the best scenes lay in the skewering of the group itself. The scene in which one group member returns to "real life", to attend a high-powered meeting at his advertising agency, only to discover his "client" is actually one of the group's own spastics, is priceless. This is then topped by a viciously hilarious sequence in which one young guy imposes himself on a group of scary, tattooed bikers, drooling and moaning away. The bikers unexpectedly show fellow feeling, decide he must have to pee, lead him to the john, pull down his pants, and even aim his penis into the urinal, all as the poor kid desperately tries to urinate and stay in character. I'm not sure I've EVER laughed so hard.The movie ends on a typically uncompromising note. The most enigmatic (and most recent) member of "The Idiots" provides the biggest surprise. When the test of "going native" rolls around - Stoffer challenges his followers to take their life style back into the "real world" - Karen rises to the challenge, and returns to a family that we always half-assumed rejected her. Only it turns out that SHE rejected THEM - after the death of her baby son, she didn't even go to the funeral - she just opted out of the tragedy completely. The scene in which she returns to her grieving, stone-cold husband and relatives, and then begins to twitch and drool, is nothing short of unbelievable. We can see in their chill why she left them - but we can also see how horrifying her behavior is in the context of insurmountable personal grief. The movie ends with a slap and a departure - hopelessly, in a way. There's no compromise between these two worlds - even if both are at bottom broken.(Btw, the video I saw actually had little black boxes blocking out the male - and sometimes the female - genitalia. Look for the scene in which the little black box gets longer - it's a hoot all by itself!)
19 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :- It takes a Dane, 27 April 2002 Author: ekkir from Denmark
As a Dane it may be easier to see where Lars Von Trier is coming from with this social criticism (satire of social criticism!) movie.First of all he comes from a country that prides itself in two traditions:1. a state that takes care of and cares for everyone2. a country that has a long tradition of social-criticism in literature and moviesFor more than ten years it seemed that every big film project in Denmark had a social agenda...That was probably the only way to get financial support for your film project - which was most of the time, if not all of the time - supplied by the state.This film is poking fun - primarily - at this social criticism tradition, while it also renews it.But how much should we take seriously - Lars Von Trier would probably laugh at anyone, who takes this movie at face value - as a bona fide social criticism (which it is not!) and - of course - it fails as traditional "social criticism", just look at it - this is not a film like Pelle the Conquerer, there are no drunken, heavy-set men seducing their underage nieces and abusing the working man sadistically.In short this movie wasn't meant to succeed in the genre in a traditional sense.It has a more profound agenda - I have a hard time putting words to it, because what the movie says is so very Danish. Certain scenes are simply great: When they visit the factory and "the idiots" are allowed to turn the machines on and off...I can't explain why that is so intensely funny, but I'm pretty sure it's a Danish thing.This film is funny, sad, sentimental, wonderfully-acted... It comments on a social-democratic tradition and state that embraces you for better and for worse...It also talks about capitalism in this system...Maybe it's really all about the compromise inherent in a social-democratic tradition existing parallel with a capitalist system. Such a compromise could be viewed as hypocrisy from a philosophical standpoint.Central to this movie is the theme of honesty and sincerity...And all the while you don't want to take it too seriously, because you have a feeling that the director isn't all that serious about it himself...In short I find the movie and it's intention irresistibly confusing.
16 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :- A stone in Your Shoe, 17 February 2005 Author: dana_jones_23 from Germany
In Epidemic, one of his previous films, Lars von Trier noted that "a film must be like a stone in the shoe". Eleven years after Epidemic, Lars von Trier is famous, his budgets grew larger and so do the stones he puts in the spectators shoes. No, reality is never what you think it is. It stops moving when you expect it to rush, and than it rushes in a way that makes you dizzy. People that you considered to be serious collapse when it comes to testing their intentions in reality, and people that you never took a note of will prove to be the real heroes of life. At the same time Lars von Trier and his excellent actor ensemble try to explain why (non violent) social experiments always fail, in spite of what we learn at school and watch on TV. They fail for three main reasons. First, the intentions of the hardcore of every movement of this kind are different that the ones they declare on. Second, the few who take a social project seriously will remain outside the hardcore group in a lonely, non-influential position. And third: the external conditions for running an experiment of this kind are such, that it's impact is limited up front to zero, often without the acting persons realize it. A brilliant movie of a brilliant filmmaker, who revolutionized the cinema in the last generation. A must for every thinking person.
19 out of 30 people found the following comment useful :- this movie defies criticism, 16 July 2002 Author: Marek W Lugowski (marek@enteract.com) from Chicago, USA
I just got to see it for a first time, in our Film Center, on a big screen, in 35mm. Then I hung around for the movie about its making, "The Humiliated"/"De Ydmygede". I ranked it a 10, and the movie about it was very good to see, too, and on a large screen, and in quick succession. I was very saddened by the only idiotic thing about this movie: the black censorship rectangles slapped over the print clearly not by von Trier the film-maker, over penises of actors or over some other frontal nudity or gasp actual sex. In the context of this work, this nudity was about as offensive or noticable as in a medical context, that is to say, not at all. The censorship was not only ridiculously unnecessary but offensive in the extreme. I feel ashamed of living in the US when things like this happen. To me, this was the true humiliation -- and Lars von Trier is to be congratulated for evoking that out of our sad country. "The Humiliated" was not edited, which, ironically, gives one the missing glimpse of anatomy, here and there. How pointless to even care to censor -- but also, how revealing. The two movies claw at the dishonesty of our culture and our hangups even in this wounded capacity as object of futile censorship. At first I was annoyed by the clipped faces in von Trier's framing at the beginning, but then I understood (this was not my first Dogme95; I just forgot about this aspect of it). Once I understood, I got so absorbed in what was shown that I did not notice the passage of time and regretted when the movie ended. The Idiots could do well a TV serial. It presaged the so-called reality TV and preempted it in one fell swoop. I think it will age very well as important fingerprint of our times. Maybe one day someday Americans will grow up enough to let it see the light of the projector or even TV without the silly black rectangles marring the print. All involved should feel very excellent about making this movie. It does a great job approximating the complexity of real life, a little delicious, thoughtful corner of it, and an uncomfortable one, at that. It defies criticism.
12 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :- Is anyone not an idiot?, 15 November 1998 Author: Ron from Tel Aviv, Israel
A group of retarded guys & girls grabs on to Karen, a bystander to their moronic behavior in a restaurant, and they try to teach her and themselves how to bring out the idiot that's inside you (and me). In documentary style, derived from the Dogma95 rules for the film maker, Von Trier reaches into our guts, twisting a knife slightly sharper than the one he used to "Break The Waves". A similar style was used in "Epidemic", one of his first films, which shocks us with the reality of death from a plague, slowly crawling into the diagetic / real world.It's a social problem he addresses. Is being normal normal? Try thinking of this small society, a micro cosmos, as a way out from the problems of the daily life - trying to escape instead of coping, trying to hide behind social masks and hypocrisy instead of facing the society with our real self, our real power. Notice who's the real idiot at the end of the film - who's the one who REALLY needs to escape and who ends up facing society fearlessly ? (I'll hint that these are two characters)
5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :- with Russians it's the same, 7 December 2000 Author: (alexis@udar.rupib.donetsk.ua) from Ukraine
Moment I stood up just after film had ended I thought that the Danes are similar to the Russians, at least in this narrow scheme. I saw the film as if it was my friends' jests and mockery alive. Melodramatic `Breaking the waves' won my heart year ago. But I have seen nothing of the Idioterne's kind. It has no sentiments but love is in it, as well. I think it reveals life as it is and people as they are. What you hate in them and love the same time. How they might be loved in spite of all shortcomings. At first glance, the same as critique I have seen, it is a cynic film. I think it is not. You must love `real' people, as I saw through this film, I can do it. It brings hope. Hope I will never been forsaken. Never been alone.Best wishes, Alesha.
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