LARS VON TRIER, MICHAEL HANEKE AND THE EUROPEAN ART FILM

Paper

Linda Beatley: Lars Von Trier

Caroline Painbridge: Lars Von Trier
Jack Stevenson: Lars Von Trier

Introduction

Art film conveys the non-commercial Danish cinema, starting in the 1920, with
Einsestein, the early Buñuel.
Art film as an opposite to mainstream American cinema.
1960 there was a new development starting in Italy, France that spread in Europe. A
new kind of attitude to cinematic narration was established. We will look at that getting
close to Haneke and to Trier.

We will watch two Haneke films and two Trier films.

Getting into the concept of what Art film is.

- Introduction
- Brief characteristics of the European art film
- Bresson (inspiration for Haneke)
- Bergman (early inspiration for Trier) + Tarkovsky (Antichrist: pure Tarkovsky).

Book: read the short article that says that the art- cinema is rooted in European cinema.
Survey mentioning the avant garde. French surrealist experiments in the 1920 with
Buñuel, the cabinet, Einsestein… The art films. A very different narratological end
aesthetical approach to cinema. A minority.
Are these films against the usual clichés of film narration? They are exceptions.
1960 the narrative had reach a state where it was right for this experimentation to root.
The New Wave and the modernism. They weren’t experimental in the sense of being
seen in special teathers. They had a normal audience and they were screened in normal
theathers. Fellini, Antonioni… The French “last year in Marine park”. From the
conventional American view they are crazy and they don’t even make sense, but they
were shown as normal cinema.
A non conventional way of showing stories. We are in the after moment of that
irruption.

Somehow we can see contradictions between the structures of the European art film and
the Holywood mainstream films.

121 page: differences MAINSTREAM FILM V.S. ART FILM

The contrast between these is huge. The mainstream genre film is not a clean clear
thing, and is not completely opposite to the art film, they meet at some points. You can
have one art film that is 100% ART film-. But often we can see (Cache- Haneke//
Antichrist – Trier) that the different elements that belong to the mainstream movies
appear sometimes in the art film. Antichrist is an art film that has taken some elements
from the genre film, and it has mixed them with completely different things.
In the antichrist everything is completely unpredictable ( Also in Cashe). Cashe is a
thriller, and we are expecting a revelation, but somehow (that is the speciality of
Haneke) the directors make the viewer be disappointed in that expectation (he believes
that’s good for the phycology of the viewer). Haneke follows an strategy: his movie has
the elements of a thriller, but is not a reliable thriller. The thriller has to obey some rules
that are not followed by Haneke.

Genre film has a tendency to follow some elements. But there are exceptions to this
rules (for example a movie where the hero dies- it is more usual for the hero to live//
protagonist dying in the conclusion – Braveheart--).

Some movies that follow usually the elements that belong to a certain mainstream
genre, sometimes they include characteristics that belong to the European Art film.
An art film would say: guess what happens. Not shown everything that happens in the
screen. The films that have the influence of the European art film usually do that.

“Comando”- Swacheneger – mainstream film. We automatically identify with the

project of the protagonist. Even if we don’t feel related to him we will put our attention
on him, and in what he is doing. The plot is moving forward and the plot is everything.
We don’t stop ourselves in other theoretical questions. We are focused in the action, we
cant watch it from the distance, we are into it. You are biologically attracted to the
action, to the things that happen.
We automatically understand what is happening.

“India song”- Margeritte Duras (writer and filmmaker) – Art film. It raises more
questions that answers. What is this about? We see a lady lying of the floor of a house.
The entire film is situated in France but they claim that it is India. She is resting there
and suddenly two men appear. The problem is that we don’t have any access to what is
going on there. The context don’t help very much, is difficult to understand the meaning
of that. When we ask these kind of unanswered questions to the film, is an European art
film.

This movie was influential for Trier. He saw it in the 67 in Denmark when he was 20
years old. He saw Fassbender, Bertolucci, Tarkovsky…

The principle in this film is so different from the mainstream films. Our brain, when we
see a film like this works trying to decipher the action, the situation, what is going on.
Our brain is dealing with that. Film theorist of the cognitive side, they would say that
our brain has been made that way. Our brain has this tendency to somehow create and
overall understanding of the situation.

We can’t really decipher what is going on, but we will try. That’s somehow when the
brain realizes: I can’t explain these art actions. The brain will tell you later that or stop
bothering about it (not appealing to see something where there is no real direction) or
we will automatically think that as we cant find explanations to the actions of the
protagonists: the scene will have a higher meaning, is representative of a higher
meaning. We cant se the direction of what is happening, but we can find a meaning, a
higher meaning.
These audiences are seduced for the images, for the sounds, for the words. This cant be
explained in the same logical way as the mainstream movies. But we can’t find sense as
an artistic expression that we can understand in some other ways. Grasping the inner
message it has an internal meaning and power.
Abstract essence of artistic experience that can’t be explained in some other way. The
art become meaningful, because it has an artistic soul. People cant be persuaded to see
the greatness of that, because people have to stablish a dialogue with that greatness.

The Turin horse- Bela Tarr (Hungarian contenporanian filmmaker): anecdotes about
Nietzsche and an experience that he had with a horse. He doesn’t want to tell an history
about Nietzsche, but he wants to show what happens to the horse.
The beginning of the movie is just made in one take. There are two possibilities: you get
bored or you get hypnotized. You let yourself to be hypnotized, the music, the
monotony of the situation, supported by the fact that is is one take: it makes it symbolic.
This is somehow the representation of the mankind. Sisyphus like his stone somehow (
the stones relating to the myth would fall every time he would build them). The man in
the wind, that’s a representation of the difficult live of the human beings. We have to
find the higher meaning of the images. The mainstream movies cut all the images that
they don’t believe are necessary for understanding the sequence of the movie.

Lumiere: An audience, Maxim Gorki include, watch the Lumiere’s film (a home video
like movie) and they feel surprised and delighted about being able to see the wind in the
background. The unpredictable reality going inside the frame.

The Turin horse is an example of how our brain has to possibilities: leave the teather or
stay; and if you stay try to find a symbolic view of the art film that is being screened; an
existential meaning.

Paper

- European art film elements

- Compare two films in the context of the European art film. Or try to explain
witch elements of the movie belong to the European art film, and witch one to
the genre.
- It will be possible also some others authors that work in the deconstruction of
the movie (Godard). Use the background of the course and relate them to
different authors of Art film.

Melancholia- Armaggedon: two different ways of showing the end of the world (the
impact of a satellite against the earth). These two films are about the same. In Triers
Melancholia is a fragmentary poetic way of showing the impact ( the prelude of Wagner
Tristan). For Trier the cosmic disaster is something about showing the depression. Some
fragmentary pictures that are filmed with some visual effects.
For a logical point of view Melancholia makes no sense (she is wearing the wedding
dress, and the wedding was several weeks ago).
Is a vision of a depressed man, it doesn’t have to have a conscious meaning; it explores
the unconsciousness.
Armaggedon is based in the story of the hero, the hero that has to save the world. We
have a concrete problem, and someone has to do something about it. In Melancholia the
protagonists can’t do anything to fix the situation. In Melancholia there is no project,
just people realizing that is nothing to do.

- Look to too parallel examples, to two different approaches to a same subject and
see the differences between mainstream and art film. “Narration in modern
cinema (Hungarian author)”.
- The influence of the European Art film in other countries: Iranian art film
(Abbas Kirostami?). Japanese art film.

Mirror- Tarkovsky: The mother has left the tea in a surface and it has left a mark in the
table. And we see how that circle disappear: this is remarked by the music and by the
image. What the viewer is seeing is significant. There is not explanation of why is
significant, the meaning of it, is up to us to decipher the meaning of that. It could be
saying something about how fragile life is: is just a moment of breath and then is gone.

Double Jeopardy: by the close ups that the movie shows we understand immediately
what is going to happen. Here we see things to no precisely what is going on.

---------- Handwritten

French New Wave --------

Godard:

Look info about  Godard, Bresson and Truffaut.

About the soufflé: Godard is one of the most important authos of the French New Wave.

Two or three things that I know about her: Godard is pointing art things all the time. Is
an essential movie in the modernist movement. There is hardly a plot and all the time
the kultur, the art is pointed out.

Godard was also a crazy politic activist. His friend was Truffaut.

Jules and Jim.

Bresson: au hazard Balthazar, un condemme.

BERGMAN

Friendsy: influenced by the film noir, by the German expressionism. Not directed by
Bergman, it was his script.
It was late for the moment he was allowed to do really personal works. Summer with
Monica, a theme that was international: young girls without clothes in the beauty
Sweden. In the mid fifties he broke up us a great international director. He made films
that win a prize in Cannes. In the winter he made theather with one of the leading
theaters in Sweden.
He makes two really good works in the mid fifties:
 The seven seal. During the bubonic plague. A game of chess with the dead (las
mil y una noches). The film came out in 1957. A film taking place in the
Medieval time. In the context of the atomic bomb and the tension between
eastern and westers powers were intensify (cold war). This story somehow
portrays also that atmosphere of terror that was rooted in the society.

 Wild strawberries: an old men in his mid 70ths (actor known for acting and
directing films in the silence cinema in Sweden). The new genius of the Swedish
cinema find a man and gives the old role to this old man who looks back in his
life. The structure of the film  this doctor lives in Stockholm and he is going
to be an honorary doctor in Lund. He is supossed to go there the next day and
receive the prestigious title. He has a disturbing dream and that makes him
wonder and decide to take the journey in another way (drive all the way to Lund
by car). He will visit places where he has been in his life and he sees characters
that have filled his life. He has more dreams during this journey. We get this
flashback dreams – this is a typical thing of the art film, to show the inner life
that the human beings have-).

Beginning: a surreal dream. The film signalizes that the film is going to be
focused in the inner life of this man in his approach to the dead. Many films of
this period will be centred in the human values. This is not a normal movie, is an
artistic expression on the side of other ways of artistic expression.

In the 60ies he directed The silence. The theme of the film is the silence of god. God is
not reacting to the human’s actions. A world where god is absent. Two girls travelling
around a foreign country where they cant understand the language. A war is going to
arrive to the city where they are staying. One of the girls has Tuberculosis and the other
doesn’t really know what to do. The movie it wasn’t an international success because of
his sex scenes. The film was the bestselling Swedish film ever.

A new generation has appeared in Sweden by that moment, in the beginning of the 1960
with the New Waves. Many young filmmakers where starting to direct movies there.
“One guy” made a pamphlet where he would criticise Bergman for not focusing in in
the real reality of the human life and paying to much attention to god and the absent (it
was old fashioned…).
They were the modernity. In that time Bergmans work become more modernist
Persona., The title of the film was going to be Cinematography. Is the most dearing,
innovating and enigmatic film that Bergman has made. A woman that chooses “silence”
for some strange psychological reason. She is put in a mental hospital and they send
here with a nurse to a summerhouse in an isolated place in the coast of Sweden. Then
the film focuses in the relationship between this two women. In between we have some
art fragments. At some moments the film breaks, go out of focus: is a film that is
insisting on his reality as a film (is saying: I am a film). Is a film about cinema: what is
film?
Surreal beginning (the kid is the son of the theatre actress?). The kid is reading a
Swedish translation of a Russian book. This beginning if pointing out that he is going to
explore an irrational world, don’t expect a normal film.
In the middle of the film the movie breaks itself again. We have the negative breaking
itself in the screen, and enigmatic images once again: blurry landscapes, the
crucification, the eye that is open to the cinema.
The film is directing our attention to the nature of the film: this is a film. Bertolt
Brecht’s influence is noticeable in this way of pointing out to the film. The main idea of
his theatre is : the teather of the illusion. They talk about the missing 4th wall. We can
remove the one of the wall of that world and be able to see how people really are living
inside that world. Theather performance made in a way in witch we are totally
conscious all the time about its nature of “play”. We have to know all the time that the
play is a real play, and not be set into a parallel world. We don’t have to forget about
society and reality when we are in art. Art has to be a confrontation where we know all
the time that we are confronted all the time to the artist. “Alienation”.

Persona is a movie with no logical solution, so the interpretation is totally open. Read
what Susana Sontag said about Persona.

Culture is a way of distinguishing ourselves, and that can be noticeable in Persona.

Tarkovsky

His made his first films in 50ies and then in the 60ies: La infancia de Iván. The content
of the film doesn’t make it an art film, but the aesthetics, the way in witch the film is
made is a complete different thing. The states officials didn’t like the film, but it was
showed in Cannes and everybody thought it was fantastic.

Is it possible to make really weird art films in Soviet Russia where some rules are
exigited? Buy somehow he was allowed to made them. Then he made a film in Italy:
Nostalgia.
Then he also made a film “Sacriface”. A story about an artist with a connection to god.
He understands that the world is going to end and so he make a deal with god : he is
going to sacrifice all he has (his family and his house) and God lets the world live. He
puts fire to his beautiful wooden house. That scene is all made in just one long take.
There was a problem and he couldn’t make it in one take. So he had to rebuild the
hourse for the scene to be made in just one take.

Solarys: Science fiction film.

Stalka:

The camera leaves the characters. It flies showing us different things that are important
for the viewer.

Zerkalo: childhood story of the absence of the parents. Is about childhood and
adulthood. The real father is reciting his poems. We hear about Spanish war.
In art film we have to communicate with it. There is not a simple reading of it. The
enigmatic moments and fragments appear all the time.

Tarkovsky has written his essays and diaries: Sculpturer of time (escultor del tiempo).
He has religious perspectives in his films. The simple visual persuasion is where his
greatness lies.

Caché/ Michael Haneke

Art film. The film has been recommended as a fantastic thriller, but it contradicts the
usual rules of a thriller.
It starts with mystery, but the end of the film is open. That is not usual in thriller: we
need to solve the mystery. There is no clear statement explaining what happened.

There are two main mysteries, two tracks through the plot: the mysterious video tapes
and the man who has connection with the protagonist and who has a past history with
him.

Ibsen: the wild duck and dollhouse. Echoes of Ibsen and Freud.

We solve one of the mysteries: we know what happened with that kid and the main
character.

The last scene of the film: the school shot  the little kid is in the scene but also the son
of the man who with he had the problem.

The video showings of the tapes have been shown by two well known directors already:
David Lynch “Lost Highway”/ The Ring.

Why he gives us all this thriller impulses and then not give us the answers? No
conclusion makes us think. The movie stays in your mind, and it roots inside you.
There is an implicit reference to something that Haneke said in many interviews:
inspiration for him is that he saw a tv program about an event that took place in Paris.
The 1972 massacre by Paris police against demonstrators, the Algerian war.

Middle class European (educated upper/middle class); the kind of portrayal that Haneke
choose. And these characters are usually in trouble.

“Criticsm is the revenge of the intellect on the artists and art” – Susan Sontag
Haneke don’t like the criticism in terms of some group of intellectuals who gather
together to discuss the artists and decide a certain interpretation.

How should we understand the tapes? They feel that it is a threat. In the beginning there
is no reason for them to feel threatened, but then the drawings start to arrive and
immediately we understand it as something threatening.
The image that we have after showing the tape of the night is a flashback. The drawing
must provoke a flashback in the memory of Georges.
Card that Pierrot has received at school  context of a dreaming person or memorizing
person. The young boy appears in the flashback also provoked by the card that Pierrot
receives at school.

The third appearance can be felt as classical scene, because it shows that it is a dream.
Anyway, it is not totally classical, because the previous scene is a social gathering, that
no gives space for the dream.

This is a history of a collective guilt, the guilt that happened for the Algerian massacre.
It shows the guilt of one man that is influenced by the necessary guilt of that event. Is
trying to transfer the guilt feeling to the audience.

We feel that we the audience are the ones that are looking at the traumatic events. We
are the ones that look to the scene of the family taking the guy away and also is us the
ones that watch the video tapes.

Home invasion history? That person is telling the protagonist that he knows things
about you.

Sc.ku.dk

9/03/2015

Haneke made a version of the Kafka`s “the castle”. That book ends in the middle of a
sentence, and Haneke does the same.
Haneke has a career in tv, and is not really well known. He just appreciate a film in two
parts that he made about young people in the suburbs of an Austrian city (where he
grow up, taken from his young memories) – problems with school, love affairs,
parenting…-. The second part takes place 1979, 20 years later… all the young people
were 20 years older. All of them are tormented egos, and so the future is quite
pessimistic.

In the late 80ies he started making films.

Usual: scene and pieces of black. Is for demonstrating that he is showing something
determined by him. This way we can feel the author.

“Seventh….”
In one of his movies, the movie starts and the audience is not able to see the characters
faces. We can see the filmmaker in there making himself present. This makes an
impression of a boring life. He lefts out all the things we would expect here and we are
just allowed to see minimalistic information. Making the family anonymous you point
to the materialist side of this experience: breakfast in the capitalistic society.
The spectator is kept in the distance during all the film.

He would never put music under the scene. He won a prize for a music scene: in this
scene it seems like if the music was in the back, but it is not, there is an explanation for
it. So he makes the music come from the car. In the art poetic moment that he creates
with the girl the music has a huge dramatic value, that’s why he decides to make it
appear as a part of the car music.

Bennys video: a boy that murders a little girl as a short of an experiment. In the end of
the film the kids turn up his parents to the police.

Funny games: Home invasion film. Specific formula showing a normal mainstream
family in a mainstream surrounding. A normal situation develops into a really extreme
and threatening situation. Remote control: this wouldn’t be allowed in a mainstream
film

Lemminge: the girl tries to kill herself but he fails. A typical thing of Haneke is to show
how even if they are discussing suicide the young boy and girl greet politely to he
woman (ironical).

Temps du loup: a man is killed when the family arrives to their summer house.

Amour: portrait of the old age. In the end the husband let her die.

Optional subjects 3 (elective)

Oral exam

Activity code: HFMK0115E