Provocation: Lars von Trier

               

'A joyless sexual tantrum...' 

Provocation: Lars von Trier

My research into the Dogme 95 Manifesto got me thinking a lot about Lars von Trier. A man who was described by Shia Labeouf  as 'this generations Tarkovsky'. When I began writing about Dogme, I was most definitely a LvT apologist. I thought, 'Hey I actually kind of like Lars von Trier, people just choose to misunderstand him.' I went through this little phase of being obsessed with Lars von Trier for about a week, and then realised I'm a bit of a fake fan seeing as I'd only actually seen Melancholia.  

So I decided to watch Nymphomaniac Vol. I & II (I watched the directors cut of both, a total of 5+ hours of LvT time). Nymphomaniac was described  by the New Yorker as 'a joyless sexual tantrum'. I read a lot of reviews before and after watching Nymphomaniac. The general consensus I gathered was the people hated LvT and that his film was a  film designed solely to provoke, nothing more than a  vanity project.  Nymphomaniac really got me thinking. I enjoyed Vol. I, I did not enjoy Vol. 2. But, as I said it got me thinking, the more I read about the film, the more I digested it I had some thoughts about my own artists inner compass. So I thought a whole darn blog post should be written - to break it down good style.  

We shall begin at the beginning, with Nymphomaniac Vol. I. 

  “Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.” - Vincent van Gogh

I had already decided I loved the film before I had even watched it, and in my experience it is those films which tend to be the most crushing disappointments. I watched the trailer over and over and over again. I loved the colours, I loved the actors, I loved the way the camera moved, I loved the bodies, and I especially loved the line 'Perhaps the only difference between me and other people was that I've always demanded more from the sunset; more spectacular colours when the sun hit the horizon. That's perhaps my only sin'. Hearing that I experienced one of my favourite moments as an audience - when a piece of art articulates how you've always felt before you have been able to. 

After I'd watched Vol. I I knew by no means was it 'genius', like so many of his actors claim his work to be. But nonetheless I really did love the film. I thought hard about why that was, when other people disliked it so intensely. I came to the conclusion that who you are and what time in your life you watch the film is imperative to this particular experience. This film is not one of the few universal works of art. I do consider myself really quite lucky to have watched Vol. I being a young woman (with sexual trauma and mental illness) at the beginning of her sexual, romantic, and professional life. I feel very much where Young Joe is, and perhaps I am very much where Lars is. The thing about von Trier is to me he seems still a teenager. As if he is still experiencing everything for the first time and, in his own profound and gentle naivety (not stupidity or malice), misunderstanding almost everything. 

The New Yorker journalist Richard Brody had a very critical reaction to Nymphomaniac's rejection of love. He writes:

'For von Trier, love means having to do things you don’t want to do at a given moment, whether it’s sleeping at home beside your spouse when a momentarily more enticing lover awaits or having Sunday dinner at the in-laws. Love means always having to say you’re sorry. And far from being sorry, he’s cavalierly indifferent.'.

Brody sees  Joe's rejection of love as von Trier rejecting the boring day-to-day compromises a person in a relationship is forced to make. Whereas I? - I understood differently what Young Joe, B, and their friends rejecting. Not what von Trier was rejecting, it is important that I specify I understood what the characters were rejecting. I understood it as, yes, a rejection to commitment. But a rejection of the commitment of love, not the commitment of responsibility. A rejection of the feeling of becoming so enamoured by a person you become a sort of pathetic version of yourself, lost in the toss of your emotions. Vulnerable to a person who has absolutely has no obligation to love you back. I think specifically in heterosexual relationships, for me this fear felt more pronounced. I feel scared of men, most definitely. I feel as though women we grow up monitoring ourselves. Brought up on Disney films and fairy tales where falling in love with a man is not just the happily ever after - it's the central conflict and it's the end. Joe is saying fuck you, so fuck me. In a probably deeply problematic and concerning  way, I found that quite liberating.

Vouge had a really nice quote that I felt understood Lars more than Brody, 

'He’s [von Trier] both fascinated by and scared of women’s primal, emotional power...'

As is most likely evident, Joe resonated with me, and I really really wondered why. I was a bit worried that I resonated with her so much - I thought, 'Goodness, what does that say about me?'.  So I reflected, and here is - and before I carry on this is not a review or a reading of the film. I want to make that very clear, I'm not trying to say it was this way or that. The following is purely what the film, it's story, and characters meant to me: okay? Okay.

I saw Joe's nymphomania as a tool for control, in a oxymoronic way, to control herself and to protect herself. I very much understood this (so maybe I am projecting). Equally I felt that Joe was controlled by her need for control - which totally with my experience of mental illness.

I most definitely related to the feeling of being a 'fallen woman',  a perverse woman, a shameful woman. A person who is unfit to take part in society. To me Joe's nymphomania was like my OCD - it hit the nail on the head of every fear at the root of my neurosis. Joe's nymphomania, like my OCD, destroyed her, created her, consumed her, and paralysed her. These films are the last of LvT's 'Depression Trilogy', and to me this was not just an exploration of addiction or sex addiction. But a film that explores the way a mental illness feels. 

As I mentioned before I am a person who has experienced sexual trauma. So as well as just wanting to watch the film, it was also a planned exposure therapy exercise. Just being able to sit through the movies and not cry or have a panic attack made me very very proud of myself. And in the strangest sentence perhaps written about Nymphomaniac found it very healing. Somehow, watching Charlotte Gainsbourg perform an abortion on herself with knitting needles was healing. These films were visceral, and I think films should be visceral. I think visceral can be healing. 

Nymphomaniac Vol II was my great disappointment. 

The plot was, the plot was a bit silly and didn't make that much sense. There were scenes in the film that felt quite offensive (and I'm usually not the type to feel offended). Scenes that stopped feeling like Joe was speaking, and started sounding like Lars was speaking. There was one scene that particularly irked me, and pretty much ruined Lars von Trier for me. Okay, here's the required context:

Joe eventually decides that trying to partake in society is not working for her and never will. She thinks it best suited to become a criminal. She goes to this guy (played by Willem Dafoe, who is really hot in this movie and in my opinion did not get enough screen time), that somehow she knows (even though you have to really suspended your disbelief as to how she knows him) who helps her start up her own business as a 'debt collector'.  Essentially, she is hired by shady people to collect money they're owed by other shady people. So Joe does this and seems do well by sexually torturing her victims as a means to collect the debt. In this one particular scene she has a man, who she ties up to a chair, pulls his pants down and starts telling a story about every type of sexual deviancy a person could have (to see which one gets him hard as a way to blackmail him). She exhausts her list and thinks he's a normie until she gets to the last one and basically discovers he's a nonce. And then she gives him a blowjob. Joe has been retelling this whole story to Seligman, to the man who found her bloodied on the street and took her in. He asks her why she did it and this is the conversation that followed:

Joe: Nobody knew his secret. Most probably not even himself. He sat there with his shame. I suppose I sucked him off, as a kind of apology.

Seligman: That's unbelievable!

Joe: Listen to me. This is a man who had succeeded in repressing his own desire, who had never before given into it right up until I forced it out. He had lived a life full of denial and had never hurt a soul. I think that's laudable.

Seligman: No matter how much I try, I can't find anything laudable in paedophilia.

Joe: That's because you think about the, perhaps 5% who actually hurt children. The remaining 95% never live out their fantasies. Think about their suffering. Sexuality is the strongest force in human beings. To be born with a forbidden sexuality must be agonizing. The paedophile who manages to get through life with the shame of his desire, while never acting on it, deserves a bloody medal.

So first of all, what the fuck?

Where did Lars von Trier get that statistic from? Please tell me where the statistic that 95% of paedophiles don't act on their desire came from? How could anyone even take any reliable data on such a matter? 

How does Joe know that he's never hurt children and why assume he's never realised he's a nonce until now?

The whole thing doesn't even make any sense! If he's never acted on his paedophilia, she has absolutely nothing to blackmail him with. Joe would have to plant explicit material on him - which she could have just done in the first place without actually having to do any of this. 

What if he was into something else say, an Armie Hammer style cannibalism kink - what was she planning to do with this information? I literally do not understand it makes no sense. What frustrates me is there is no craft here! It's like Lars von T has come up with this convoluted plot line to awkwardly jam somewhere in his film so he can be a paedophile apologist? 

I thought, I must be missing something because this seems absolutely so idiotic - that this must be a subversion of something. I was just disgusted by it. Especially that last line, 'deserves a bloody medal'. CRAZED DIRECTOR SUGGESTS GIVING PAEDOPHILES MEDALS - that's the headline. I found this scene to be lacking in any respect for the audience. In my opinion an ultimate crime for the artist. 

I do agree with a lot of the articles that called this film narcissistic. I do find this narcissistic. I do find this incomprehensible, I do find this uncalled for, and I do find this irredeemable. 

However, it is not without it's lesson. I think a big part of why
people don't like Lars von Trier is because it often feels like he has no respect for his audience. It feels like if anything he loathes them and thinks them stupid. I've learnt from Lars that I don't want to please my audience. Nor do I want to shock them, nor do I want to resent them. The only thing I feel as an artist I must do, to make truly meaningful work, is respect my audience.  Lars von Trier is just some guy. Just some guy, with some opinions - it is up to me whether I give his opinions significance or not. It is up to me whether I am outraged, but I think by being outraged I am giving his words significance. I've realised it is not the artist who creates the meaning, but the audience. 

Returning to Melancholia and ending on provocation. 

I was going to say that Melancholia was the best and least provocative of all of Lar's films, and go on to make a point about how provocation is a hinderance. But then I realised I've only actually seen three of them. So I can't really go that way. I think Melancholia is probably von Trier's most popular film, followed by Dogville. Despite my lacking Lars knowledge, I stand by my point. When he treads lightly, he speaks volumes. When he shouts, you can't hear him.

 What really really really (really) frustrated me about Nymphomaniac was the press response. 

People seemed very shocked by the explicit sexual scenes and I couldn't really understand why. I felt like a lot of the conversation around the film was misdirected to a debate about whether the movies were porn or not. Which to me is just so ridiculous.

It made me think of Blue Is The Warmest Colour and the sex scene in that film. I think it might have been the first queer film I ever watched and I was talking with a friend about it. She just laughed and said 'Oh that's the one with the lesbian sex isn't it?'. I remember feeling very disheartened by her response. 

To me there is nothing provocative about the sex or nudity in any of the films I've mentioned. But it seems to have overexcited people nonetheless. I've come to the conclusion that provocation gets you nothing but gossip and distracts from the real message an artist has. I have learnt that in my own art, and my own life, that perhaps when trying to cross boundaries it is best to whisper to be heard.