The Idiots (1998)

A group of retarded guys & girls grabs on to Karen, a bystander to their moronic behavior in a restaurant, and they try to teach her and themselves how to bring out the idiot that's inside you (and me). In documentary style, derived from the Dogma95 rules for the film maker, Von Trier reaches into our guts, twisting a knife slightly sharper than the one he used to "Break The Waves". A similar style was used in "Epidemic", one of his first films, which shocks us with the reality of death from a plague, slowly crawling into the diagetic / real world.

It's a social problem he addresses. Is being normal normal? Try thinking of this small society, a micro cosmos, as a way out from the problems of the daily life - trying to escape instead of coping, trying to hide behind social masks and hypocrisy instead of facing the society with our real self, our real power. Notice who's the real idiot at the end of the film - who's the one who REALLY needs to escape and who ends up facing society fearlessly ? (I'll hint that these are two characters)

Fmovies: Punk exists in movies too! This is just a reaction to all the candy-assed Disneykids corny American filmmaking that absorbs money you could better spend on fighting poverty (not drugs). It makes me want to go out and see another plastic Hollywood disaster (without paying the fee) and spasm right there in the crowd! But of course I haven't got the balls for it.

Speaking of balls, the sex scene is also a very bald critique towards ridiculous porn and corny porn lovers. I'm glad there's also films being made for real adults. This is not distasteful; this is a blessing for taste and style. A movie that should be looked upon with great respect. Lars keeps me happy!

This movie is very explicit, and definitely not for the faint hearted - if you have a problem with nudity etc. you should stay away (unless off course you want and eye opener)

The idiots was the second film made under the influential "dogma" rules (E.g. Spielberg (and others) has taken it up) and just as nr. 1 (T. Vinterberg's "Festen") and nr. 3 (S. Kragh Jakobsen's "Mifunes sang") the acting is superb, and almost too realistic. The shaking camera and the documentary feel really hits the viewer right in solar plexus. You want to cry, you want to scream!

In my opinion the theme is self realisation, modern man etc. If one wants to it can even bee seen as a comment to Hitler, manipulation, group thinking, the power of the mass etc.

It's not quite as tightly pulled of as "Festen", i.e. the idiots is maybe five or ten minutes to long. However: I claim that contrary to "festen" this movie is much more an art movie. It wants something more; it wants to constantly make the viewer aware of himself as a social individual with prejudice and more.

I wouldn't want to label this film social criticism, rather individual awareness.

As such it is the opposite of Von Triers "Breaking the waves" which was a very good movie as it made a very good impression of having a lot of depth that it just didn't. (which is a good achievement - I mean this)

(Breaking The waves and Mifunes sang: 8/10 Festen and Idiots: 10/10)

The Idiots fmovies. What can you expect from a film based on a childish manifesto like Dogma 95? Bad lighting, bad acting (with a couple of notable exceptions) and a feeling that some of the scenes (like the orgy) were introduced only to prove that the Dogma was being obeyed...

The story itself (a group of people pretending to be mentally retarded and interacting with the "normal" world, with each other and with themselves) is sometimes intriguing and certainly will not leave any spectator undisturbed, but it is not enough to make this piece remarkable.

Only to be seen as a curiosity...

In Epidemic, one of his previous films, Lars von Trier noted that "a film must be like a stone in the shoe". Eleven years after Epidemic, Lars von Trier is famous, his budgets grew larger and so do the stones he puts in the spectators shoes. No, reality is never what you think it is. It stops moving when you expect it to rush, and than it rushes in a way that makes you dizzy. People that you considered to be serious collapse when it comes to testing their intentions in reality, and people that you never took a note of will prove to be the real heroes of life. At the same time Lars von Trier and his excellent actor ensemble try to explain why (non violent) social experiments always fail, in spite of what we learn at school and watch on TV. They fail for three main reasons. First, the intentions of the hardcore of every movement of this kind are different that the ones they declare on. Second, the few who take a social project seriously will remain outside the hardcore group in a lonely, non-influential position. And third: the external conditions for running an experiment of this kind are such, that it's impact is limited up front to zero, often without the acting persons realize it. A brilliant movie of a brilliant filmmaker, who revolutionized the cinema in the last generation. A must for every thinking person.

I just got to see it for a first time, in our Film Center, on a big screen, in 35mm. Then I hung around for the movie about its making, "The Humiliated"/"De Ydmygede". I ranked it a 10, and the movie about it was very good to see, too, and on a large screen, and in quick succession.

I was very saddened by the only idiotic thing about this movie: the black censorship rectangles slapped over the print clearly not by von Trier the film-maker, over penises of actors or over some other frontal nudity or gasp actual sex. In the context of this work, this nudity was about as offensive or noticable as in a medical context, that is to say, not at all. The censorship was not only ridiculously unnecessary but offensive in the extreme. I feel ashamed of living in the US when things like this happen. To me, this was the true humiliation -- and Lars von Trier is to be congratulated for evoking that out of our sad country.

"The Humiliated" was not edited, which, ironically, gives one the missing glimpse of anatomy, here and there. How pointless to even care to censor -- but also, how revealing. The two movies claw at the dishonesty of our culture and our hangups even in this wounded capacity as object of futile censorship.

At first I was annoyed by the clipped faces in von Trier's framing at the beginning, but then I understood (this was not my first Dogme95; I just forgot about this aspect of it). Once I understood, I got so absorbed in what was shown that I did not notice the passage of time and regretted when the movie ended.

The Idiots could do well a TV serial. It presaged the so-called reality TV and preempted it in one fell swoop. I think it will age very well as important fingerprint of our times. Maybe one day someday Americans will grow up enough to let it see the light of the projector or even TV without the silly black rectangles marring the print.

All involved should feel very excellent about making this movie. It does a great job approximating the complexity of real life, a little delicious, thoughtful corner of it, and an uncomfortable one, at that. It defies criticism.