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Cannes Film Festival View of America
Any self-respecting Euro knows, or at least strongly suspects, that Americans are a bunch of venal hicks who would happily carve up their mothers with a rusty knife and sell the pieces on the open market in order to increase their income. And now, just in time to confirm those deep-seated suspicions, comes “Dogville”, a new film written and directed by Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier.
According to the Washington Post:
European critics and movie goers alike have been beating down the doors in order to see this film, which is the odds-on favorite to win the prestigious Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival. Von Trier is somewhat of a film wunderkind, and has done well at Cannes in the past. Moreover, he is uniquely qualified to make this “harsh indictment of small-town America”. According to the New York Times:
But by far the most impressive qualification is that von Trier has never been to the US. Interviewed in the Washington Post, von Trier said:
Lest anyone think that “von” Trier represents a stunningly unique monument to the vagaries of the artistic temperament, we also have Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf, whose feminist "Panj e Asr" ("At Five in the Afternoon") is also in the Cannes competition. Last week Makhmalbaf accused President Bush of being “an American version of the Taliban.” So far as I can tell Makhmalbaf has never been to America either.
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According to the Washington Post:
"Dogville" is set in a fictional town in the Rockies. Kidman plays Grace, a desperate stranger who asks Dogville's residents (played by Lauren Bacall, Paul Bettany, Stellan Skarsgard, Chloe Sevigny and others) to hide her from ruthless gangsters. Initially portrayed as homespun and considerate folk, the people of Dogville turn out to be morally despicable individuals who are variously treacherous, fear-driven and even rapacious. … In the movie's biblical scheme of things, they get their just deserts.
Raised by his radical, nudist Communist parents in an unconventional environment where, as von Trier once put it, everything was permitted except "feelings, religion and enjoyment," von Trier blossomed into a neurotic, left-wing, movie-loving youth. Given a Super-8 camera at age 11, von Trier spent his teens making movies and entered Copenhagen's film school in the early '80s. After winning prizes at the Munich Film Festival in 1981 and 1982 for his student films, and adding the aristocratic "von" to his name …
"The story could have taken place all around the world, but somehow the whole style of it was American. I've been reading Steinbeck. And so I asked myself how it would be" to set a film in the United States.
"Actually, I feel like an American. Ich bin ein American," he said, echoing John F. Kennedy's pro-Berlin comment of the 1960s. "I would love to start a 'free America campaign,' because we've just had a 'free Iraq campaign.' That's how I feel. . . . I am sure it's a beautiful country. I would love to go there [but] I'm afraid of going there. Maybe this is all because of wrong communication [from European media], I don't know. I think it could be a wonderful place, but I'm not able to go to America right now because I don't think America is how it should be."
"Actually, I feel like an American. Ich bin ein American," he said, echoing John F. Kennedy's pro-Berlin comment of the 1960s. "I would love to start a 'free America campaign,' because we've just had a 'free Iraq campaign.' That's how I feel. . . . I am sure it's a beautiful country. I would love to go there [but] I'm afraid of going there. Maybe this is all because of wrong communication [from European media], I don't know. I think it could be a wonderful place, but I'm not able to go to America right now because I don't think America is how it should be."
edit: fixed url's
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