(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)
Emily Watson's performance is extraordinary, and Stellan Skargard is very good, but this is without a doubt the most degrading, depressing and tragic movie I have seen in a long, long time. I had to force myself to watch it, hoping that somehow something redeeming would transpire. Two and one half hours later I can say that it did not. I wish I could say that this was a great work of art, but it is not. It is a sad, very sad commentary on the madness of human beings, a twentieth century 'tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.' Particularly depressing were the church fathers in their beards and their stupidity. And be forewarned, the sexuality is degrading, and the very essence of human love is willfully and repeatedly perverted.
In making this movie, Director Lars von Trier no doubt sought a kinship with the tragedies of Shakespeare and the Greeks in which the fates destroy the protagonist because of a so-called 'fatal flaw,' a flaw the protagonist cannot help. Bess's fatal flaw was her childlike nature twisted by circumstance. In the great tragedies the essential purpose is to bring the audience, through its involvement and its identification with the protagonist, to a catharsis, a catharsis that cleanses the emotions and allows us to see the world as it really is, free of self-delusion. But Von Trier's bizarre and pathetic ending with those ridiculous bells in the sky was closer to bathos than anything else, and steered us not toward catharsis but into a kind of emotional limbo where not even emptiness is felt.
Emily Watson's performance is extraordinary, and Stellan Skargard is very good, but this is without a doubt the most degrading, depressing and tragic movie I have seen in a long, long time. I had to force myself to watch it, hoping that somehow something redeeming would transpire. Two and one half hours later I can say that it did not. I wish I could say that this was a great work of art, but it is not. It is a sad, very sad commentary on the madness of human beings, a twentieth century 'tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.' Particularly depressing were the church fathers in their beards and their stupidity. And be forewarned, the sexuality is degrading, and the very essence of human love is willfully and repeatedly perverted.
In making this movie, Director Lars von Trier no doubt sought a kinship with the tragedies of Shakespeare and the Greeks in which the fates destroy the protagonist because of a so-called 'fatal flaw,' a flaw the protagonist cannot help. Bess's fatal flaw was her childlike nature twisted by circumstance. In the great tragedies the essential purpose is to bring the audience, through its involvement and its identification with the protagonist, to a catharsis, a catharsis that cleanses the emotions and allows us to see the world as it really is, free of self-delusion. But Von Trier's bizarre and pathetic ending with those ridiculous bells in the sky was closer to bathos than anything else, and steered us not toward catharsis but into a kind of emotional limbo where not even emptiness is felt.