Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

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Zot!
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Re: Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#51 Post by Zot! » Thu Dec 05, 2013 7:03 pm

Is there still some kind of extended cut playing at Cannes, and how does that differ?

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colinr0380
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Re: Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#52 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:25 pm

While he is too far down the cast list to have gotten the privilege of an "O"-face poster, here's a picture of Jean-Marc Barr hugging a Mako shark in the nude.

Apparently it is all to do with a petition to raise the awareness of deep sea trawling! That explains the fish theme I suppose!


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Re: Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#54 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Dec 26, 2013 5:31 pm


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jsteffe
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Re: Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#55 Post by jsteffe » Fri Dec 27, 2013 4:55 am

For this, of all films, I hope the marketing team isn't shy about getting creative with the "uncut" thing:
NYMPHOMANIAC
a film by
Lars von Trier

Uncut, because it's better that way.
Or do you prefer it cut?

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mfunk9786
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Re: Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#56 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Feb 11, 2014 2:18 am


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Finch
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Re: Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#57 Post by Finch » Sat Feb 22, 2014 7:58 pm

Quick thoughts on Nymphomaniac Vol 1 & 2: fastest four hours I've had at the cinema yet though you could certainly argue that the film is indulgent. First part is really funny then the second volume brings on the darkness (and the sadomasochistic scenes are very disturbing; I'm not going to be able to look at Jamie Bell in quite the same way again); Gainsbourg and Skarsgaard great, LaBouf and Stacy Martin are terrible. As a gay man I'm probably the wrong person to ask but I found the sex scenes perfunctory; I doubt von Trier meant for them to be arousing. Part 1 is the weaker half of the film mainly because Martin is so out of her depth but it has the best scene of the entire film in Uma Thurman's cameo. The "Mrs H" chapter goes from being hilariously and awkwardly funny to bitterly sad in seconds. If I had to choose one scene from the film as a standout, it'd be this one for sure. Part 1: C; Part 2: B+ Film overall: B

I'm usually not keen on Von Trier but this is among his better films and only eclipsed by Melancholia in my personal estimation.

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kidc85
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Re: Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#58 Post by kidc85 » Sun Mar 02, 2014 4:42 pm

Agreed, an incredibly fast four hours. It's less like Tarr or Angelopoulos, more like binging on a TV series. Having said that, I don't think Trier uses the time well. Too much time is spent on Stacy Martin/Young Joe, it's a bland performance and her exploits are not as complex as the Gainsbourg/Joe flashbacks which, forming only about a third of the movie, suffer from being too abrupt. My favourite chapter, which revolves around Gainsbourg/Joe becoming an extortioner for Dafoe and then grooming a successor (a radiant Mia Goth, I was shocked to learn this was her film debut), could easily have been extended into an entire movie, so it was unfortunate to see it treated so elliptically.

The sex, or rather its explicitness, was rather a non-event for me. If you've seen and are comfortable with Breillat, BROWN BUNNY or even his own IDIOTS, it would be hard to find NYMPHO gratuitous. Although, like Finch notes, the BDSM sequence is very violent and is likely to make most people squeamish. It's definitely to Trier's credit that the levels of nudity (which are, admittedly, very high) feel appropriate and integral to the broader themes rather than just being titilating for the sake of it.

Like all Trier, I'm not really sure of what to make of it after only seeing it once, especially seeing as he seems to be having even more fun than usual with saying contradictory things. It's an easy film to recommend though: there are plenty of striking ideas, two brilliant central performances from Gainsbourg and Skarsgard (a rarity: a framing set-up that actually works and is absolutely essential to the overall film, possibly even the general highlight), sequences that will go down as iconic within Trier's work, and - for those who struggle with Trier's tendencies towards the pompous and overbearing - some genuinely funny, very silly moments of self-deprecating humour.

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Finch
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Re: Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#59 Post by Finch » Sun Mar 02, 2014 5:55 pm

You reminded me that the transition from Martin to Gainsbourg struck me as very unconvincing. In Part 2, when Martin's role in the film ends we're told via voiceover that three years pass and that Joe transforms within that amount of time from Martin who doesn't even look like twenty to Gainsbourg who looks considerably older than the VO suggests she is.

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Re: Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#60 Post by kidc85 » Mon Mar 03, 2014 3:00 pm

mild spoiler
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That Jerome - who is older than Joe - didn't age at the same time was more confusing, I thought. But still not quite as confusing as Christian Slater not aging whatsoever.


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Re: Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#62 Post by boywonder » Wed Mar 12, 2014 3:57 am

I have only watched part one of "Nymphomaniac" ... part two isn't yet available to download. Can someone tell me if they believe Joe is an impartial narrator? I have my doubts ...

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Re: Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#63 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Mar 20, 2014 3:24 pm

Y'all in the Philadelphia area: I got confirmation that the two-screen Ritz East (best theater in Philadelphia, of course) will have an overlap between the release of Part 1 and Part 2 of at least a week. So when Part 2 arrives, they'll both be playing in the same theater on opposite screens, allowing you to schedule your own double-feature (which is how I'll likely be seeing the two parts now that I know that!)

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Re: Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#64 Post by swo17 » Fri Apr 04, 2014 5:36 pm

Forgive me, but this review will be a moral one, and rather long.
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First, some definitions of terms. There's a certain stigma attached to the words "sin" and "shame" which I believe results from their abuse by being used against others rather than directed internally. I don't know how widespread this view is within various religious traditions, but I don't see sin as something that, say, makes you a bad person or condemns you to hell. Quite simply, sin is something you do that prevents you from being your happiest. Everyone does it to some extent, but it is not, or at least needn't be, intrinsic to one's character. The sin tries to convince you otherwise—that you are different from everyone else and a bad, irredeemable person, that the sin is a part of you because you have the inclination to commit it, and that since the inclination is natural it must be indulged—but this is its trick to lead you away from happiness, and it only seems to become true to the extent that you give into it. Sin is or at least should be a very personal concept, and to the extent that it internally generates shame, this is simply to discourage you from selfish or destructive habits. Shame is the soul's own personal defense mechanism, if you will, and treating it otherwise, as a weapon against others, for instance, is a sin in and of itself. (Because you'd be happier if you directed this impulse internally and used it to better yourself.)

Joe states that perhaps her only sin is never being satisfied with the sunset. A thing of natural beauty but one that cannot be altered. Her dissatisfaction does her no good because she has no power to change anything about it. She would be happier if she would just accept what she cannot change and learn to find satisfaction in the sunset or other aspects of life for what they are, without demanding more from them. Her unhappiness is not the sunset's fault. But is this attitude problem of hers also something that cannot be changed? Can only one in a million change it?

Joe never nominally acknowledges her sexual escapades as sinful though she certainly manifests evidence of personal shame. She feels she is a terrible person, and that this will become evident as she recounts her life story to Seligman. There are several things she goes on to describe that explain why she might be self-loathing. She starts early with a hint at how she would start to come between families, with a tale of how she "relieved the load" of a man who was on his way home to try to conceive a child with his wife. She goes on to relish toying with men's emotions (at times, literally at random) and breaking up at least a couple of families along the way, including her own. But oddly, it's not empathy for those that she has hurt with her actions that drives her shame. It's the fact that despite every attempt to "fill all of her holes" (both literally and figuratively), she eventually finds her life has become dull and monotonous. Loneliness is her constant companion. However this feeling arises in her, she regrets her actions, for a time. But at other times she embraces it all, for instance, proudly declaring herself a nymphomaniac at a meeting for sex addicts. That she vacillates between these two extremes is not surprising. Both of these conflicting impulses are natural ones. There is nothing wrong with her.

Seligman offers counterpoint to the pleadings of Joe's conscience. He encourages her not to be down on herself. He offers the learned voice of reason that rejects the concepts of sin and shame. He is intrigued by her story, but primarily from an anthropological perspective. He is unlike everyone else, asexual. He offers her no judgment because he is merely an impartial observer of human behavior, and to judge a behavior might taint an accurate measurement of it. He only seems to take offense at Joe's story when he finds fault with her manner of storytelling, or when she rejects the idea of political correctness. But he has not lived through what Joe has. He cannot appreciate the natural adverse reaction of her body and soul to her nymphomania. Instead, he gleefully draws parallels between her experiences and completely unrelated scholarly topics that he has only read about. He tells her that society has a double standard, and that her story would be unremarkable if she had been a man. But how does any of this help her? Seligman's name means happiness, but what does he know of it other than what can be read in a book? He speaks eloquently but to what ends? We ridicule those that speak wrong but mean right, and elevate those that speak right but mean wrong.

In a deliciously ironic if inevitable von Trierian ending, not moments after Joe has announced that she is resolved to take the one in a million chance to change her ways, that she was glad fate had conspired not to let her become a murderer, and that Seligman might just be the only friend she has ever had, he politely attempts to rape her (and pays the ultimate price for it). He is just like everyone else after all. He wasn't really listening. His nonjudgmental aphorisms did not have her best interests at heart. Everything he said throughout the film was merely pretense.

Does the film overstep its bounds in making this point? Does it go too far? Take another look at that director's credit—of course it does.

Other thoughts:

• The changes in actors from young to old Jerôme and Joe were inevitably somewhat awkward, but note where they were positioned within each character's arc. If I remember correctly, Joe's transition came shortly after giving birth (because children age us?) and Jerôme's came after an ultimatum to Joe wherein he threatened that if she left she would never see him again. Also, for what it's worth, I thought Stacy Martin was a dead ringer for a young Charlotte Gainsbourg.

• Loved the fakeout reference to the child's death in Antichrist and the Tarkovsky-esque spontaneous snowfall.

• I'm completely unconvinced that someone would leave a marriage with Uma Thurman under any circumstances, but she does steal the show in that role, so I suppose I'll let that point slide.

• Perhaps the character of Joe was named solely for the sake of the Beck/Gainsbourg song that runs over the credits of Volume II, but it works beautifully.

• Glasgow.

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Re: Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#65 Post by R0lf » Sat Apr 05, 2014 9:53 am

I liked that there was a clear line drawn in the snow that the term nymphomaniac was used very specifically in the way that the amount of sex she had effected her life and not that she was having it.

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Re: Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#66 Post by MichaelB » Sun Apr 06, 2014 1:37 pm

swo17 wrote:
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I'm completely unconvinced that someone would leave a marriage with Uma Thurman under any circumstances
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Gary Oldman and Ethan Hawke managed it.

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Re: Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#67 Post by swo17 » Sun Apr 06, 2014 4:14 pm

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Merely a PR campaign to make her appeal more to that key male 18-34 demographic. She's actually still happily married to both of them.

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Re: Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#68 Post by "membrillo" » Sun Apr 06, 2014 4:22 pm

I know I have mentioned this before regarding LVT's previous films, but at this point it seems to be a sort of game of "how many Tarkovsky references can you spot" and Nymphomaniac is loaded with them.

Overall, I really enjoyed the film and was able to overlook the terrible performance by Shia LaBeouf. Did anyone else find that his accent seemed to change during the course oF the film?

Also, I found the Jean Marc Barr sequence as the only really disturbing part of the film, and not because of how old he looks.

The Hey Joe cover was ok but I think ending the film with Rammstein would have been better.

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Re: Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#69 Post by GaryC » Sun Apr 06, 2014 6:54 pm

[quote=""membrillo""]The Hey Joe cover was ok but I think ending the film with Rammstein would have been better.[/quote]
Some of the music choices were very on the nose, that one especially given
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the lyrics of "Hey Joe"
. Also, "Born to be Wild" with Joe and her friend in the fuck-contest on the train. And Talking Heads's "Burning Down the House" when a car gets torched.

That said, I did think Rammstein's "Führe mich" was very effectively used.

The soundtrack was part of the film's formal design, given that it begins and ends with sound over a black screen. Also, Chapter 5, where Joe deconstructs her sex life by use of a Bach cantata, each melody line using a separate front sound channel, I suspect will become rather more outré demo material for home cinephiles.

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Re: Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#70 Post by warren oates » Wed Apr 09, 2014 4:57 pm

I appreciate the more in-depth responses from those above like swo, who seemed to connect with the film more than I did. But I have to agree with Gary C about the music and others like membrillo about the Tarkovsky references/ripoffs, which seemed especially egregious this time around, perhaps because of the feeling that they were so unearned.

Of all the von Trier films I've seen, other then maybe Europa, this one probably comes the closest to feeling like it was really just an exercise, like he'd already decided exactly what every frame of the film would contain while he was writing it, as well as what it would mean to him -- and that shooting was just a mere formality, the way Hitchcock used to claim it was for himself. Even the ultra-grim ending, which arrived with zero surprise, felt too constructed, a bit of a put on, like von Trier doing von Trier. And the protagonist's dramatic and thematic arcs are just kind of very much "so what?" rather than revelatory, like they are, for example, in the superficially more artificial world of Dogville. The ending isn't so much a surprising and inevitable outgrowth of character defining choices as it is a conceit strictly reverse engineered to allow von Trier to justify (or at least to pay lip service to, since I don't buy the justifications) all the excesses we've seen before it. Which makes Joe, at least retroactively, feel more like a narrative device than a character.

If this is the product of a von Trier in complete command of his powers, fully confident (perhaps even too much to question some of his less interesting choices?), then I much prefer the crisis-mode von Trier, who made Epidemic when he couldn't get anything else made, and whose marriage and idea of cinema was breaking down around him on The Idiots; or the depression-era von Trier who, out of that despair, made Melancholia and repeatedly insisted that Antichrist was created at only 50% of his power. The best bits in Nymphomaniac for me are some of the moments in the frame story, the self-consciously meta jokes and knowing banter between Gainsbourg and Skarsgard, and the silly way she arrives at chapter titles. But I feel like the whole could have been at least an hour shorter and better for it, though still not the sort of film I had hoped to see from this director.

There's a small moment in The Idiots (a film which also has way more to say about society's rules and conventional morality) that has more to say about sex and love than all four hours of Nymphomaniac:
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I'm talking about the retarded makeout scene, of course. Wherein Jeppe and Josephine, whilst "spazzing," share what's maybe the least fake movie kiss I've ever seen.

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Re: Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#71 Post by Black Hat » Thu Apr 10, 2014 4:41 pm

After spending close to four hours in the cinema yesterday I have so much to say about this film that I don't know where to begin. I have a lot of respect for Trier, find him to be a remarkably intelligent guy. This makes me feel that there has to be a well thought out reason for every choice he makes. I'll be back when time allows with a longer write up but for now I want to focus on the ending.
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What the fuck was that?

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I'm not advocating that film should have ended with her going to sleep. Something had to happen after, but that? That predictable? The only defense of it that I find plausible is that it was the final act of Jo's empowerment, her feminism, her sexuality. It felt clumsy. Now having said that how else could he have ended the film? Tough question. In that regard I understand Trier's plight.
Apologies if those who have seen the film have commented on this already. At the moment I couldn't read everything out of fear of getting sucked into what I'm sure would be fascinating, insightful chatter.

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swo17
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Re: Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#72 Post by swo17 » Thu Apr 10, 2014 5:14 pm

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As I discuss in greater detail above, I think the ending is a key turning point meant to discredit Seligman's role as innocent, nonjudgmental observer throughout the film. It's also deeply cynical, obliterating a brief, proud spark of hope with the worst thing that could have possibly happened. Which is often how life works.

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Re: Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#73 Post by R0lf » Fri Apr 11, 2014 8:37 pm

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I saw the very end as LVT losing confidence in the ability of the movie to hold it's own dramatic weight without staging some kind of overt drama. It reminded me a lot of the ending of Jeanne Dielman where after three and a half hours of watching Dielman unravel Akerman clumsily feels she has to show an overt change in Dielman to make her point.

I also thought the resolution of The Gun section in the alley was weak but after thinking it over I guess the overbearing symbolism of having Joe's experiences with patriarchy and maternity united is kind of funny and at least reasonable.

I really enjoyed the rest of the movie though and am more or less content to ignore and forgive the ending.

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Re: Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#74 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Apr 12, 2014 5:50 am

R0lf wrote:
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I saw the very end as LVT losing confidence in the ability of the movie to hold it's own dramatic weight without staging some kind of overt drama.
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Interestingly this is the way I saw the bells ending of Breaking The Waves for the longest time, and long before I saw the 'miraculous' climaxes of Dreyer which Breaking The Waves seems to be paying homage to. I've since relaxed my attitude a lot towards the ending of that film and am curious as to whether the endings of von Trier's films play shockingly (and inevitably and manipulatively. Even aggravatingly!) first time around and then take on a different hue on repeat viewings.

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Re: Nymph()maniac (Lars von Trier, 2013)

#75 Post by ianthemovie » Sat Apr 12, 2014 9:42 am

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Still processing this, having seen Vol. 2 only just last night. But re: the ending:

This seemed to be an ironic conclusion straight out of the Marquis de Sade, whose work of course is very much in the background of this film (and LvT's others; apparently Breaking the Waves was inspired by Sade's Justine, and that name is later given to Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia). While there are certainly many, many other figures being played with (as it were) in Nymphomaniac, not least Tarkovsky and von Trier himself, Sade is a huge point of reference. See for example the many 18th-century novelistic touches, the picaresque structure of Joe's narrative, redaction of characters' names ("P.," "Mrs. H.," and so on), all of which are typical of 18th c. literature. Even Joe's initial pronouncement "This will be a moral tale" is an 18th-c. convention. And the sexual narrative punctuated by long philosophical digressions is exactly how Sade's novels are structured. (The volume/chapter divisions also add to this, though it's worth noting that nearly all of von Trier's films have some sort of similar divisions.)

Anyway, the ending seems to me to be a good example of vT using Sadeian humor. Joe says, in an almost cloying way, that she's going to renounce her sexuality and become a good, "happy" asexual like Seligmann. Little does she know that he will turn out to be just as corrupt and vicious as everyone else, prompting her to shoot him. As in Sade's universe, there is no escaping sexuality or evil. Very simply put, Sade insists that human beings are fundamentally self-interested, violent, and driven by power (sexual or otherwise). Those who deny this or act otherwise are (according to Sade) falsely conditioned by society to believe that piety and virtue are in their best interest. To try to renounce one's sexuality, or to try to become good/virtuous (either sexually or otherwise), is a futile task.

Both Sade and vT make this point ironically and brutally. At the end of Justine, our beleaguered heroine--who has spent the last 200 pages being repeatedly raped and victimized--decides she's finally going to get rewarded for her goodness and virtue. She prepares to settle down into a peaceful life. She is then promptly electrocuted by a bolt of lightning during a thunderstorm. (In a later version of this ending the lightning bolt exits through her vagina.)

vT's ending seemed to me to be a similarly ridiculous, audacious and somehow perfect punch-line. I felt that Nymphomaniac had plenty of flaws but I was quite pleased with that ending.

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