User Reviews

Most people are drawn to this film simply because of the chic (though quickly diminishing) appeal of the Dogme 95 manifesto, and through the curiosity factor raised by the film's brief, though certainly explicit, mid-narrative gang-bang. I think this is a bit of a shame, because beneath the façade of daring social satire and beyond the conceptual restrictions of the Dogme movement, there is a touching and affecting story here, which, in terms of emotional relevance and characterisation, is easily as endearing and beautifully realised as the bleak portrayals found in von Trier's other films, Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark. It is important to note also, that The Idiots forms something of a loose trilogy with the two films aforementioned, in which von Trier, inspired by an old Danish children's book, set out to make three films that each dealt with a naïve and almost childlike female protagonist, who, during the course of the film, sacrifices absolutely everything that she had at the beginning of the story, in order to undergo a kind of emotional and spiritual transcendence at the end.

As with many of von Trier's more recent films, the plot is deceptively simple... in the first scene (a disorienting mish-mash of fly-on-the-wall, candid camera and Luis Buñuel) we are introduced to the character of Karen, a meek and pensive woman, who, being unable to afford the more expensive items at a fancy upper-class restaurant, is chastised by the waiter and frowned upon by the curious clientele. At the far end of the restaurant we find a young carer, with two grown-up, mentally handicapped men. When one of the men takes hold of Karen's hand, our shy protagonist kindly agrees to help the young man out to the car. However, once there, the young man still refuses to let go, and the group, with Karen quietly in tow, eventually meet up with another group and embark upon a bizarre and shambolic tour of an insulation factory. These first ten minutes of the film (incorporating both the scene at the restaurant and the scene at the factory) are the most disarming, with von Trier throwing the audience into Karen's subjective perspective, and forcing us, as it were, to spend time with these people in order to understand and, to some extent, better appreciate the central ideology of the film.

By the time we discover that the idiots are "faking it" as part of some ill informed social experiment, we are forced, much like Karen, to take sides and make the decision... are we willing to spend another two hours in the company of these idiots? The rest of the film unfolds in a similarly episodic, fly-on-the-wall style, as the idiots try to get one over on the bourgeoisie by "spassing-out" in public places (restaurants, swimming pools, parks, bars and suburban estates) or unwinding at the posh, upper-class house of their self-elected leader, Stoffer. As the group mentality is pushed further and relationships strained, we watch Karen come to terms with the group and the sense of emotional liberation connected to the "inner-idiot". Whereas the other members of the group are privileged, arrogant and self-centred, Karen remains detached, though simultaneously in awe of the way these characters have seemingly cast off the problems of the everyday world and thus, as a result of this, it is Karen who remains the only member of the group willing to take her "spassing" to the next emotional level come the film's agonising closing moments.

For me, it is the character of Karen that really makes the film work, and I feel saddened by the fact that the previous commentators have made little to no reference of her or the actress who portrays her. Here, Bodil Jørgensen gives a brave performance that is certainly less showy than some of the other characterisations (particularly Stoffer, Jeppe, Josephine, Axel and Katrine), creating a believable character who, throughout the course of the film, reveals subtle emotional layers that allude to some unspoken sense of personal tragedy that is only really discussed towards the end of the film. The final scene of the picture, for me, is one of the most important scenes of the film (much more important than the majority of confrontational scenes that became the principal talking points), with Karen allowing her emotions to completely consume her, and thus, illustrating the allure of "spassing" and the freedom and catharsis that can be attained through such an act of emotional simplification.

It is of course important to take into consideration the group dynamic and the daring and emotionally honest performances from all involved (particularly Jens Albinus, Anne Louise Hassing, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Louise Mieritz), though, for me, it is the plight of Karen and her sense of sacrifice that ultimately defines the underling message of the film. Naturally, there is no getting away from the formal and technical constraints of the Dogme movement, with the film employing hand-held cameras, jump-cuts, natural lighting, no props and no post-synchronised sound, however, these factors should be seen as part of the visualisation of the text, as opposed to an empty aesthetic. Those that see the film and merely take from it the sense of experimentation and the surface controversy of theme and content (the explicit sexual footage takes up about five minutes of screen time in a film that runs for more than two hours) are really missing the point, whilst to limit the effect and purpose of the film to something as juvenile and trivial as the miss-treatment of the mental disabled, is on a par with people citing À bout de soufflé as being noting more than the film that gave us the nouvelle vague.

The Idiots is a film that goes much deeper than the central notion of intelligent characters acting the idiot, and instead, presents us with an honest and heartbreaking film about personal loss and the act of overcoming.

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!)

Movie such as this is one of the reasons I can't stand any of the depressing melodrama for the sake of depressing melodrama that's over-saturating every medium on the planet these days. Enough of these bad things happen in real life, we don't need everything we watch nor read or listen to; to get away from normal life to be completely centered around the exact thing we're trying to take our minds off of. Director by King Dogma Attitude Lars Von Trier, 'the Idiots' is his try to make a film in compliance with the Dogme '95 Manifesto film making movement which he started. He fails to live up to it. What is the Dogme'95 Manifesto? Dogme '95 also known as Dogme#2 were rules to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, theme, and excluding the use of elaborate special effects or technology following close to a Vow of Chastity rule. Like a whore in a nun's church, Lars broke the rules in this movie by bringing a prop onto the set and used special lighting. Von Trier also used background music (Le Cygne by Camille Saint-Saëns) in the film. The whole Dogme '95 movement collapse with this movie. Due to trying to live up to the Vows, the movie suffers from errors on screen such as boom mics or cameraman getting into the shots. The idiots also marks the second film in von Trier's Golden Heart Trilogy, which includes Breaking the Waves (1996) and Dancer in the Dark (2000) which had a woman put into wickedness actions. The woman in this one is Karen (Bodil Jørgensen) who is taken some interest in an anti-bourgeois group, leaded by Stoffer (Jens Albinus), whom spend their time acting like mentally disabled people in public to challenge the establishment through provocation. The idiots start to see that with they can get away with a lot with playing dumb, and see a romantic ideal of being disability gives until reality hit them hard. The movie is spoken in Danish, but I can't understand the message they are trying to say with this film. I can't decide if that dogma filmmaking method is admirable or intentionally hamstringing itself arbitrarily. The characters are unlikeable. The mocking of Down syndrome is rude. Then there is the pointless gangbang scene. That part of the film was pure hardcore porn. I know Lars Von Trier lived in nudist commune environment and yes, I know Danish has more lax attitude towards nudity and sex than the US apparently has by comparison, but honestly what was the point of that scene? It felt out of place. I felt that the Gruppeknald scene was just there to feed Lars Von Tier's pervert ego. Trine Michelsen is only in the movie for this scene since she is a porn star. Not a big porn star, but more importantly she is the daughter of the most influential Danish movie critic at the time Ole Michelsen. Ole Michelsen is famous for saying he reviews all types of movies except the type his daughter stars in. Lars von Trier makes a cameo in his movie in exactly just for this scene, by having Ole Michelsen was forced to review a movie that has the director sleeping with his daughter. That's pretty crude. For me, the idea that if someone is broken. I should be able to sympathize with their horrible behavior that demeans a group human beings that are already in an oppressed position to begin with is just no. That ending did nothing for me. I didn't feel sorry for any of them at all. This is not an art for art sakes, or whatever they made up to sound sophisticated movie, it's Z Grade exploitation either desperately trying or pretending to have a meaning. Mange tak, Lars. You made a pretty horrible movie.

Shot and finished entirely in four days. "The Idiots" is the second in Lars Von Trier's "Golden Heart Trilogy", and the 2nd film of the Dogme Manifesto. "The Idiots" depending on your sensibilities will either shock, confuse and offend you. Most likely you will feel all three.

"The Golden Heart" trilogy in a nutshell involves the female protagonist to remain completely naive throughout the story, and virtually give all of herself up to and for the people she loves.

A lady named Karen becomes friends with a bunch of very intelligent, welcoming group of people. However she inevitably becomes invited into the groups hidden agenda, which is acting like "retards" to blend into the world and escape the restrictions of societal norms. Part of me got a little offended, due to having autistic friends and family. However I didn't dwell on those emotions, as I struggled to find a deeper interest in the picture. Sadly by the end of it, it's clear that from what I saw maybe Von Trier wanted to see how far he could go in terms of decency. Sadly, that's not a notion that manages to carry an entire film forward on that strength alone.

Final Verdict: I can appreciate the experimentation behind it. I was waiting for something to be said to justify this behaviour, or for the characters to bring me some kind of sense to their plan. Yet the more you analyse the movie, the more you begin to feel maybe the point of the film was to actually have no point. A crazy notion, but the only one I can get my head around. Not essential viewing, but watch at your own risk. 5/10.