Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

[domino harvey]

The spoilered scene in question does not occur in the initial release version

And Rammstein are used perfectly in the opening/ending of Lilya 4-Ever regardless of their cred or lack thereof

[colinr0380]

Rammstein also get used to amusing effect in the opening sequence of the Vin Diesel extreme sports-turned-super spy film xXx, in which a flustered James Bond type is shown to be a fish out of water in the new world of uncouth leather clad, fire-spraying youths covered in tattoos and full of body piercings!

[domino harvey]

As the top comment suggests, it really does seem like Von Trier is directing Shia LaBeouf's life at this point

[knives]

Is he actually mentally ill?

[domino harvey]

It is like he's doing a non-scripted version of Joaquin Phoenix's meltdown from a few years back, only doing it via James Franco methods and with as little cultural relevancy as possible. I hope it's all an act, at least, though it's telling that the difference between it being a put-on and an actual exploitation of the mentally ill is indistinguishable when done under the auspices of postmodern art

[R0lf]

But there's one thing that as a German I have to say: it is definitely NOT cool to use Rammstein on the soundtrack. David Lynch made the same mistake with "Lost Highway". So once and for all: these guys are really laughable and nobody except their fanbase takes them in any way seriously in my country; and if you want that kind of sound, please go straight to Laibach and ask them to do it instead of their pale imitators.

But then I guess Laibach doesn't have much cache for straight entertainment since they've been used to absolute death in more gay porn movies than even Jean Michel Jarre.

I think you've also underestimated the humour inherent in Lynch and LvT using Rammstein and the audience ability to process Europop such as Rammstein who we understand are a novelty band in the same vein as Dschinghis Khan (and possibly also the bratwurst swinging campness of Laibach?).

[Tommaso]

I'm not very well informed about gay porn movies, but Laibach was used to great and humorous effect in "Iron Sky". An ideal choice, because with Laibach the humour is in fact intentional (whereas I believe that Rammstein has none...).

But your comparison with Dschinghis Khan made me almost fall of my chair.... Spot on! And now I keep imagining the credits of Pt.1 set to the tune of "Hey Reiter, ho Reiter, immer weiter...". Pretty fitting

[Mr Sausage]

A band that titles their song about the Armin Meiwes case Mein Teil and includes the line "Denn du bist was du isst, und ihr wisst was das ist..." probably aren't taking themselves all that seriously.

[swo17]

So I've just seen the extended cut and it's been a while now since I saw the theatrical version, but I honestly didn't notice any real changes besides the sequence that Tommaso mentioned in spoiler tags earlier, which only accounts for maybe 20-30 minutes of the added 90. The rest of the difference must be down mostly to changes in pacing, though I didn't necessarily notice anything that flowed better or that dragged on in the extended cut. Weird.

Regarding the additional sequence, it's completely over-the-top, absolutely brutal to watch, and also key to understanding what von Trier is doing with this film.

Extended CutShow

Joe is careless again with birth control but this time decides that she doesn't want the baby, eleven weeks into her pregnancy. She consults with a doctor about this, who requires that she see a psychologist to assess her circumstances and ensure that she is of sound mind in her decision before authorizing a legal abortion. Joe is very hostile to everyone she encounters at hospital--almost a caricature of the typical "woman condescended to in order to make sure she knows how horrific abortion is before she gets one." She ultimately storms out of the psychologist's office and sets out to perform the abortion on herself at home, with makeshift medical equipment and sans anesthesia. It's shown in incredibly graphic detail (even for this film!) and culminates in the fetus being hooked by a coat hanger (shown in ultrasound footage), pulled through the birth canal, and plopped onto the ground between Joe's legs, where it is seen taking its last breaths.

And then ensues a lengthy debate about abortion between Joe and Seligman. Seligman first reacts to Joe's story with a terse, politically correct affirmation of what she did. "I can't imagine what that's like for a woman, but it's a woman's choice," or words to that effect. Joe calls him out on this. She proceeds to describe her knowledge of common abortion practices, arguing that one should be fully aware of the gory details before having one, just as one should know how meat is prepared before eating it. Seligman is appalled and doesn't want to hear it. He tells Joe that she sounds like a "Texas pro-lifer." Joe shrugs it off.

What exactly is von Trier saying here? His main character has just followed an exaggerated stance in favor of abortion rights with a motivated argument against them. What is von Trier's position on the issue? I don't think he's taking a side on abortion per se, but rather, he is criticizing the way that we discuss divisive issues like this with other people, and how we are dishonest about them to ourselves. Massive gray areas with no easy, universally applicable answers are reduced to sports rivalries, doublespeak clichés, and bumper stickers. This touches on a point that Joe had made earlier in the film, about how society operates by hate instead of forgiveness. She is referring broadly here to the only too natural human inclination to decide something for yourself (often based on limited information) and then to close yourself off from other viewpoints and to view those that harbor them as enemies, as others. There is no constructive discourse in such an environment. We have lengthy arguments on the internet that only end in deepening rifts. Someone on a TV show says something we disagree with and we demand that their access to the masses be severed. If someone from "the other team" wins a political office, we long for their demise instead of hoping that they can improve things from a different angle. We espouse certain beliefs because we find them noble, but then have less than noble thoughts about those who oppose them. It's inevitable--take the most fundamental tenet that you hold at the core of your being, and there will be a great number of people in the world that hate you for it. Even if we are all ostensibly doing our best to do right by the world and ourselves. It's in our nature. To some extent, we are all guilty of this hypocrisy.

I don't know if von Trier is striving for a teaching moment here, or merely lamenting that this is the world we are stuck with (the ending would certainly seem to point toward the latter) though I can't help but be reminded here of the scandal that erupted at Cannes a few years back after the screening of Melancholia. While von Trier could have been more articulate in talking about Hitler at the time (that's what screenplays are for, I guess), he refused to give an easy, pre-packaged, politically correct answer about him. If we simply write Hitler off as an "other," then we can't identify traits that we share with him, if only in shades, so that we can be careful to avoid even fractions of his mistakes. The subject of Hitler of course comes up again in Nymph()maniac, which is perhaps von Trier's attempt to rearticulate what he was trying to say at Cannes. He also brings up pedophilia, which taboo-wise fifty years ago could have just as easily been homosexuality. There is only one acceptable social response to these topics, and anything other than that will get you quickly ostracized or vilified. But von Trier wants us to discuss these things. In a moral way, drawing lines between right and wrong, between what does us good and what harms us. But also in a forgiving way, never wishing ill on others because they have dabbled where they shouldn't have or because they are misguided, and always rooting for someone like Joe to pick herself up again and to find peace with herself. We have to be willing to forgive even our destroyers. It probably says something that von Trier only feels he can say these things when they're sandwiched between some of the most conventionally shocking images ever featured in a purportedly reputable arthouse film.

Anyway, this is just my reading of the film. Some of you may hate me for it.

[Tommaso]

Completely brilliant analysis of that sequence, swo, and by extension, also of the possible meaning of the film and von Trier's general agenda in not only this film. I couldn't have phrased it that perfectly, but yes, that's exactly what was somewhat incoherently floating around in my mind.

I also agree with your view about his infamous Cannes statements. Even though here I also tend to believe him when he said later that his desire "to entertain people" simply somewhat got the better (or perhaps the worse) of him in that stressful situation.

[Zot!]

A band that titles their song about the Armin Meiwes case Mein Teil and includes the line "Denn du bist was du isst, und ihr wisst was das ist..." probably aren't taking themselves all that seriously.

Ya think?
http://youtu.be/NNNR8UX7oKk

[R0lf]

I'm not very well informed about gay porn movies, but Laibach was used to great and humorous effect in "Iron Sky". An ideal choice, because with Laibach the humour is in fact intentional (whereas I believe that Rammstein has none...).

But your comparison with Dschinghis Khan made me almost fall of my chair.... Spot on! And now I keep imagining the credits of Pt.1 set to the tune of "Hey Reiter, ho Reiter, immer weiter...". Pretty fitting

Of course my choice for both dealing with the overarching themes of the movie and containing wall to wall music cliche: Planet O

[Zot!]

So I've just seen the extended cut and it's been a while now since I saw the theatrical version, but I honestly didn't notice any real changes besides the sequence that Tommaso mentioned in spoiler tags earlier, which only accounts for maybe 20-30 minutes of the added 90. The rest of the difference must be down mostly to changes in pacing, though I didn't necessarily notice anything that flowed better or that dragged on in the extended cut. Weird.

The extended cut is exactly that, extended. To my mind, outside of the added scene, it only serves to disambiguate all the other scenes. I noticed in particular that the dangerous men scene made more sense when they actually tried to have intercourse with her, and especially the ending was a lot more clear concerning Seligman's intentions. I see no reason to watch the theatrical cut again, and it would appear that it was done to simply make it less explicit and for time. Somehow I thought the theatrical was completely reworked, but that is not at all the case.

[jmj713]

The director's cut is now on Netflix.

[AtlantaFella]

The director's cut is now on Netflix.

So shall I skip my unwatched theatrical-version BD in favor of the extended versions streaming? The last few posts lead me to this conclusion. What say you all?

[swo17]

If you're only going to watch one version, go for the extended. If you're curious to compare the two cuts, start with the theatrical.

[AtlantaFella]

Thanks. LVT's work fascinates me but not enough to invest 11 hours or so comparing versions of a film that don't have compelling differences.

[colinr0380]

"That empathy you claim is a lie because all you are is society's morality police, whose duty is to erase my obscenity from the surface of the Earth, so that the bourgeoisie won't feel sick"

Words to live by! This is a hell of a fearless film, unafraid to be disliked, but disliked on its own terms not on those that get imposed on it. Which makes it a little difficult to criticise without feeling self-conscious! Even the running time of the films, especially in the director's cut version, feels as if it is setting out its thesis methodically and as straightforwardly as possible (time jumps notwithstanding) in order to remove any chance of misinterpretation, except for the misinterpretation that comes about through conscious choice.

I must admit though I did hope that during the film that Joe would paraphrase Cartman from South Park and throw out a rather weary one liner like "Why is it that everything today has involved something either going into, or coming out of, my vagina?!?"

This feels like an enormous mix of both external and internal influences. Externally there is the Tarkovsky one (the Bach, the Rublev icon, the nature walks), a quick seeming nod to Pasolini (in Seligman having read "The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, The Thousand and One Nights"), a bit of Antonioni (those L'Avventura-esque shots of women in the streets suddenly attracting a crowd of men), the Thomas Mann and Death In Venice discussion, and maybe even a little of Darren Aronofsky's Pi (in the numerology and Fibonacci spiral discussion). There is Greenaway all over this film too + Gaspar Noe bringing up the rear. Also the oral sex on the train scene feels like an explicit reference to In The Realm of the Senses, not just in the act but in the way that it is about stealing a man's orgasm that he was going to give to his wife (modernising the scene to be about the man saving it up for his wife to be at her most fertile in order to maximise the potential for a baby: the first of many potential new lives that Joe puts a firm stop to!), and delightedly/triumphantly showing him the evidence of the same.

There are two references that I think are most key to the framing scenes of Joe and Seligman in the bedroom though. The first would seem to be Bergman but more specifically the film that Liv Ullmann directed from a Bergman script called Faithless, which is told entirely in flashback in a writer's study by a woman from his past/a ghost/a purely fictional creation as they wrestle over the direction of a story of adultery. But also there is a hefty dose of The Usual Suspects in Nymph()maniac's framing scenes too, especially with the sense that Joe is using the objects in the room as a kind of aide-mémoire.

Those framing scenes feel as if they are about a single track mind opposed against a free associative one. Joe is continually creating a long form 'this happened, then that' narrative, but Seligman is continually stymying that with interjections. The interjections at first seem helpful, as if throwing in extra helpful context or teasing out further details, but the further we get in the first film and especially in the second film (which almost opens straight away with Joe challenging Seligman on whether he's been listening at all), it just seems about Seligman continually unsuccessfully trying to change the subject. This comes to a head in the DIY abortion scene in which Seligman talks about people not wanting to know every little detail of the procedure. Who is telling this story anyway? The author or the critic? And what "other people"? They are the only two characters there. This fourth wall breaking moment occurs almost around the same time that we get the reflection of the camera crew in the mirror. Seligman is inescapably 'society's morality police' for this tale, and is just as suspiciously self-centred as the other authority figures in the film, even before the inevitable final scene that makes that connection upsettingly explicit.

The way that Seligman is always rationally misinterpreting each key scene in Joe's story, calmly confident in having successfully figured out her rationale for every action that she has taken becomes extremely aggravating by the second film, and perfectly played to be so! I sympathised far more with Joe, especially in the later scenes, and laughed out loud at her deadpan, matter of fact line after the mountaineering rope monologue that: "I think this was one of your weakest digressions"!

I particularly like that Joe only really seems self critical in the framing scenes. In the action itself (especially when Stacy Martin is playing younger Joe, at an even further remove. I actually liked the way that multiple actors playing the same character at different ages in some ways split an individual into discreet lumps of experiences. The younger versions ghostly images of past lives, the newer ones darker echoes. No bridging the gaps between them to get back to the person they once were) Joe feels more like a force of nature, driven by urges without thinking about the meaning or message behind them too much. That itself is part of what makes Joe's intellectualising in the framing scenes ring rather hollow too, and I was left wondering if Seligman was another guy to be extorted and this was just the way that Joe found to arouse an ostensibly asexual man, through similarly intellectualising sex to the point where he couldn't help but become excited by it, despite his best efforts to repress it.

Anyway onto the story itself:

Volume I

There's almost an Anaïs Nin quality to the attempt to encapsulate a character's entire sexual history in one film, it feels both distanced and aloof from events yet also dedicated to arousing as well. Though the early childhood and adolescence sections reminded me of The Sexual Life of the Belgians 1950-1978. I wonder if this epic recounting of a character's entire life history is a response to previous characters in von Trier's films seeming not to have had much of a background, instead almost being created just for the events of the film and presenting us with someone who is in the midst of their crisis. I've been guilty of this in previous posts on the forum in suggesting that perhaps a wider context of a character's life would in some ways help to 'explain' their psychology (such as knowing whether the crises that Bess in Breaking The Waves or Justine in Melancholia face were the first time that such things had happened, or if they had been building up for a while). Perhaps Nymph()maniac shows that there sometimes is no 'explanatory' context to a character's actions, and it is barking up the wrong tree to try and create one that might not be there.

Volume I contains all of the context to explain the issues the character is going to be facing in the next film. It is perhaps not as exciting a film as the second one, but it contains a number of the key moments, even if they get drawn out a little too much, such as Christian Slater's death scene as Joe's father. Although that shows just how crucial a figure he was in her life.

On that note, I was really nervous about the relationship Joe and her father were going to have, especially in the hospital. I was a little concerned throughout that it was going to go into a much more transgressive area of perhaps Joe committing incest and having sex with her mentally deteriorating father. Instead much to my relief Joe went off into the (Kingdom?) hospital basement to find someone to have a quickie with instead (I was left imagining what would have happened if Joe and the porter got caught in that motion sensitive room from The Kingdom in the middle of the act! Would they have had to hold the position until someone came in, the same way that Stig Helmer had to keep hold of the overflowing coffee cup in the TV series?!). I sort of think that this was the most revealing moment in the film - the moment that shows, for all of its 'transgressive sex', that Lars von Trier is just a big softy at heart. Though the relationship between Joe and her father ends in a harrowing manner, there are still boundaries that are not crossed there to allow their relationship to remain 'pure', perhaps the only relationship with a man in her life that isn't about sex, other than Seligman (which makes Seligman's final betrayal an important counterpoint), and arguably K (who isn't interested in conventional sex). In some ways I think this illustrates the difference between Lars von Trier and a director like Gaspar Noe - Noe wouldn't have missed an opportunity like that, even if it destroyed any thesis that his film might be building in the process!

This first film reminded me a little of Wise Blood in the sense that the pro-sex, anti-love stance of Joe is perhaps tellingly illustrating the deep fascination with, and fear of, an actual relationship. That final scene of horror is perhaps showing what happens when someone has put all of their feelings of unrequited love into one person. Perhaps it is better for that love to have always been unrequited and disappeared from your life altogether rather than for your lover to suddenly return and prove himself to be not discernably different (or better enough to promote monogamy at least) from any other partner?

I loved the final chapter of the first film with the Bach and screen split into lover with different temperments. It adds a kind of religious epiphany quality to the triptych, with the central panel of Jerome supposed to be the key one which the others are there to emphasise through their support and contrast with. But Jerome suddenly proves himself to be unable to carry that weight of expectation, which makes for the amazing climax of existential despair.

Volume II

Or, loving the executioner

In a way the first half of this volume feels as if it is re-playing themes from von Trier's other films. The attempt to kickstart a dysfunctional sexual relationship through 'putting yourself out there' promiscuity comes from Breaking The Waves. The child on the balcony comes from Antichrist (though I like to think it shows that not all children are stupid enough to hurl themselves from the nearest balcony as soon as the opportunity presents itself!), and the knotting of the cat o'nine tails which inspires the discussion of the number of twists to a knot used in executions seems to be alluding to Dancer In The Dark.

This is where the drama starts to happen. Even the framing scenes become more dramatic with the discussions spinning off into politically charged areas. I have to say that Joe gives a pretty good defence of free speech being about being allowed to make controversial statements, and the cowardice of modern society, which are all obviously thinly veiled (and highly amusing!) allusions to the Cannes controversy surrounding the Melancholia press conference. Though these speeches obviously range wider than that and act as a scathing indictment of societal hypocrisy itself.

The second film feels like the more adult take on Fifty Shades of Grey. The sadomasochism here doesn't pull its punches and is pretty tough but also surprisingly tender too. It also contains perhaps the best Yellow Pages telephone book product placement shot since those J.R. Hartley adverts! Joe and K feel like kindred spirits, both approaching love only on their own terms. I love the way that Joe eventually shows that she's got what she has needed from her appointments with her second coming and takes control of her experiences again in the last scene in the room, laying the equipment out and assuming the position without needing to be told. But that means it is the end of the relationship, even before she makes an emotional grab for K's crotch! For which she takes more whiplashes than Jesus!

There are a few really nice matching pairs of scenes here. The masochistic dungeon with K's teacher setting homework and practical projects contrasts with the nymphomaniac ("we prefer the term sex addict") therapy session. Then the sex addict therapy session itself parallels with L's criminal business ("Extortion?" "I prefer the term debt collector"). I also love that the masochism experiences come into play both during the extortion work but also in the final scene in which Joe is beaten in the Irreversible-esque alley, where she doesn't cry out in pain at all to give her aggressor the pleasure.

(By the way I love the design of that alley. It really is like the tunnel in Irreversible in that it is a heightened run-down location that looks gloriously disturbing. Like an obviously stagebound set ready for a porno shoot. I think my favourite moment of the film has to be the opening five minutes or so of the first film which starts in blackness (one of three important scenes in complete blackness) with a developing soundscape overlaid, and then we get a number of shots prowling and exploring details of the location before the pull back reveal and Rammstein blasting out!)

The film takes a brilliantly militant turn again after Jerome is disposed of and we get the reclaiming of sex as within and a part of the individual rather than something imposed from without by society mores. The DIY abortion scene is the unambiguous self-imposed statement of rejection of any impositions onto Joe, but while Seligman might recognise that Joe is no different to a man who loves and leaves, he's not grasping that Joe is wrestling with issues around being a parent (In all of these conversations Seligman keeps almost understanding the situation yet then goes on to add an extra comment that strikes a completely false note and wrecks any sense of complicity or understanding between the pair). It is the ultimate irony that Joe ends up being forced into a surrogate parental role by L, grooming a teenage successor and then ending up having a sexual relationship with the girl too (despite the both understandable and literal but also almost Freudian protestations by Joe: "No, please. I have a wound. I have a wound"), another way that this relationship is failing the test of being non-sexual, like Joe's father. Of course that all ends in sexual betrayal and violent confrontation as the gun that was introduced earlier in the film inevitably has to be fired at least once.

While this is a film about endless amounts of sexual partners, it seems key to the film that Jerome is the bookender - he takes Joe's virginity with his mathematically precise thrusting, and does the same to the younger protegee that Joe has been training before finally beating Joe senseless (and into asexuality?). In the interim she dotes over him (and does things wrong in order to be punished as a way of getting attention, which subliminally prepares us for the BDSM later) only to be abandoned, then Joe's unrequited love reverie is shattered by his reappearance and he destroys her notions of love yet again, and eventually Joe's final turn to asexuality is driven by being replaced in his affections by a younger protegee. Jerome is the primary male sexual partner here, and he's a complete bastard. It really suggests that Joe doted over the wrong man (as also suggested by seemingly falling in love with, or at least desperately grabbing for, K), and that was her biggest tragedy, because falling in love with Jerome ended up reinforcing her own philosophy of life. I guess there could be a critique of the film as not being a particularly feminist one, in the sense that Joe really does end up being defined by the men in her life. At least in the story that she tells to Steligman.

The film seems to reach a dark point of exterminating all notions of sexuality as the only true liberation. Its a deeply unerotic film in that sense. Perhaps Joe is the true asexual of the film in that she has moved definitively beyond the bounds of sexuality. Has tried them all and found them wanting. She even finds the power to reject in the final moments, running out like a spirit off into the night, the sound of the cat flap ringing in the audience's ears, louder than the gunshot.

You might also like to know that throughout this review we've also had a naked asexual man up a stick, watching some pornography. Have you reached any conclusions?
Man: *shakes head*

[Thornycroft]

The BBFC have passed the extended version intact.

SpoilerShow

This would mark the debut of the term 'self-administered abortion' in their classification advice, would it not?

[colinr0380]

SpoilerShow

I must admit that I found that one of the worrying things about that scene was not just the abortion in itself but the way that Joe heats up the knitting needles by sticking them in the top of an electric kettle to boil!

[kidc85]

Is that not a spoiler Colin?

[colinr0380]

Yes, the posts above contain pretty big spoilers. Although I'm not too au fait with the techniques for this kind of thing I would have probably gone for another method of warming them up to sterilise them instead.

Anyway the spoiler free version of the previous post is that Joe puts *something* *somewhere* and I was surprised that *it* was one of the few things in the film that didn't explode from the interaction.

[therewillbeblus]

SpoilerShow

And then ensues a lengthy debate about abortion between Joe and Seligman. Seligman first reacts to Joe's story with a terse, politically correct affirmation of what she did. "I can't imagine what that's like for a woman, but it's a woman's choice," or words to that effect. Joe calls him out on this. She proceeds to describe her knowledge of common abortion practices, arguing that one should be fully aware of the gory details before having one, just as one should know how meat is prepared before eating it. Seligman is appalled and doesn't want to hear it. He tells Joe that she sounds like a "Texas pro-lifer." Joe shrugs it off.

What exactly is von Trier saying here? His main character has just followed an exaggerated stance in favor of abortion rights with a motivated argument against them. What is von Trier's position on the issue? I don't think he's taking a side on abortion per se, but rather, he is criticizing the way that we discuss divisive issues like this with other people, and how we are dishonest about them to ourselves. Massive gray areas with no easy, universally applicable answers are reduced to sports rivalries, doublespeak clichés, and bumper stickers. This touches on a point that Joe had made earlier in the film, about how society operates by hate instead of forgiveness. She is referring broadly here to the only too natural human inclination to decide something for yourself (often based on limited information) and then to close yourself off from other viewpoints and to view those that harbor them as enemies, as others. There is no constructive discourse in such an environment. We have lengthy arguments on the internet that only end in deepening rifts. Someone on a TV show says something we disagree with and we demand that their access to the masses be severed. If someone from "the other team" wins a political office, we long for their demise instead of hoping that they can improve things from a different angle. We espouse certain beliefs because we find them noble, but then have less than noble thoughts about those who oppose them. It's inevitable--take the most fundamental tenet that you hold at the core of your being, and there will be a great number of people in the world that hate you for it. Even if we are all ostensibly doing our best to do right by the world and ourselves. It's in our nature. To some extent, we are all guilty of this hypocrisy.

I don't know if von Trier is striving for a teaching moment here, or merely lamenting that this is the world we are stuck with (the ending would certainly seem to point toward the latter) though I can't help but be reminded here of the scandal that erupted at Cannes a few years back after the screening of Melancholia. While von Trier could have been more articulate in talking about Hitler at the time (that's what screenplays are for, I guess), he refused to give an easy, pre-packaged, politically correct answer about him. If we simply write Hitler off as an "other," then we can't identify traits that we share with him, if only in shades, so that we can be careful to avoid even fractions of his mistakes. The subject of Hitler of course comes up again in Nymph()maniac, which is perhaps von Trier's attempt to rearticulate what he was trying to say at Cannes. He also brings up pedophilia, which taboo-wise fifty years ago could have just as easily been homosexuality. There is only one acceptable social response to these topics, and anything other than that will get you quickly ostracized or vilified. But von Trier wants us to discuss these things. In a moral way, drawing lines between right and wrong, between what does us good and what harms us. But also in a forgiving way, never wishing ill on others because they have dabbled where they shouldn't have or because they are misguided, and always rooting for someone like Joe to pick herself up again and to find peace with herself. We have to be willing to forgive even our destroyers. It probably says something that von Trier only feels he can say these things when they're sandwiched between some of the most conventionally shocking images ever featured in a purportedly reputable arthouse film.

Anyway, this is just my reading of the film. Some of you may hate me for it.

A lot of great analyses in this thread but I don’t know if I could possibly agree with this more. I haven’t seen the film since its release but this is the kind of ‘twisted humanism’ I think von Trier believes in and exhibits in much of his work (Dogville perhaps most of all). I always viewed this film from the angle, buried somewhere in the ideas of swo’s excellent writeup, that Joe is looking to fill a void that is nebulous in a world that defines itself in binary, oversimplified and shallow terms. She does this by looking to sex -and really ‘power’- as the only ways to either suppress the pain of intangible isolation from the world, or to face them and try to make them tangible by taking control. Although addiction isn’t exactly the clear message I actually think it is the underlying influence, as a solution to von Trier’s own mental health issues. von Trier has been very open about his own struggles with substances and admitted that he feels he cannot survive without drugs and alcohol even though they make his life unmanageable. This feels like his own admission of the insanity of the behavior to fill a hole that can’t be filled in a world with more ambiguity than we can handle, while also validating that behavior subjectively as a way to exercise the limited control we can to face what is so overbearing and frightening about that ambiguity. von Trier sees his own behavior as insane, hopeless, and yet the best he can do with the limited scope he has in moments of distress, not to mention behavioral conditioning and self-destructiveness. It makes sense that this is the final chapter in his depression trilogy after he spent the first film detailing the chaotic mess of the acute stage of a mental health crisis, the second a more stable account of the inevitability of his mental health issues to overpower the hope, only to arrive at a less cosmic metaphor depicting a narrative of how one copes maladaptively in a world that doesn’t support flexible answers, deep investigations into truth, or sturdy supports.

He also seems to believe that we can’t actually reach self-actualization through the means constructed by our individualistic society, and so the ending doesn’t bother me because as others have mentioned I don’t believe the character in question has been plotting anything. It comes from a place of hiding and coping without actually taking steps towards self-awareness or consideration of one’s uncomfortable drives because they would create too much cognitive dissonance that would be unsupported outside of a therapist’s office. So we bury and shift until we break, putting bandaids on a bullet wound. Joe does the same thing, and she begins to realize it, but the message to me is that she’s not that special in this- she can’t even have that- so if the movie is a joke it’s a joke about her narrative (or von Trier’s experience) being any more important than anyone else’s struggling with similar issues- while also giving her a movie and making one himself because he is the most important person to himself and needs to validate that somehow, I suppose coming from himself is better than no where! So instead of being unfair to the audience I see it as an admission of the contradiction within von Trier’s own understanding of his humility and also his egocentrist parts. Even if it’s my least favorite of the trilogy it’s one of the most interesting, and pretty cool that he was able to step outside of himself just enough to engage in that self-depreciation and admission (which he continues to do a bit further in The House That Jack Built). Seeing this string of his filmography as von Trier’s own progression of self-actualization is quite fascinating, to me at least

[swo17]

Reading that again, it sounds mostly like my own life philosophy with occasional references to the film sprinkled in! Though perhaps it's actually not that much of a stretch and part of why I respond so well to von Trier in the first place. Anyway, thanks for the kind words, and nice appreciation!

[therewillbeblus]

I guess that's why I liked it so much because I share that life philosophy. It's amazing to watch a filmmaker try to access that worldview that is impermanent in any grasp we might happen to get on it, weighed down by his own personalized emotions and mental health issues, because, well same. Almodovar does something similar with more optimism, but both are artists who find a way to use that medium to channel truths about the grey space of life that are otherwise inexpressible and I love them both for this overlapping quality despite the filmmakers essentially serving as opposites in many ways!