By Peter Aspden Published: July 24 2009 Not for the first time, Lars von Trier has made a film that has shocked the world. The Danish director has scandalised audiences in the past, whether through his raw treatment of sexually explicit themes (e Idiots), politically charged allegories (Dogville), or a mischievous tendency to twist apparently innocent genres into more sinister territory (Dancer in the Dark). But Antichrist is something else again. The film opens in the UK this weekend garlanded with lurid adjectives and a proviso that is the closest the film industry gets to a health warning: "contains strong real sex, bloody violence and self-mutilation." In May, at a post-screening press conference held in Cannes, where the film won a best actress prize for Charlotte Gainsbourg, there were rare flashes of temper from the floor, to which von Trier reacted with icy disdain. Asked to "justify" the making of the film, he refused outright, reminding the members of the press that they were his guests, and attributing the work to "the hand of God". And then, for good measure, he informed his audience straight-faced that he was "the best director in the world ... and I am not so sure that God is the best God in the world." Many artists cite divine inspiration for their work; not so many assert their overt disappointment at what their deity has to offer. So I arrive at von Trier's home (there is a plain "Trier" on the door; the "von" part of his name is a hangover from a student joke), located about half an hour outside Copenhagen in a quiet country lane overlooking a brook, and wait for this truculent, megalomaniacal figure to open and ask me in for lunch. It comes as little surprise that he has chosen to play host. Von Trier is famously averse to travelling anywhere, citing his fear of flying as a reason for never having visited the US, a country whose culture he nevertheless cheerfully lambasts in his work. I have brought a bottle of Bordeaux, for which he is grateful but puts to one side, and we step outside on to an idyllic terrace surrounded by oak trees and a merry medley of birdsong. He has already laid the table with a couple of boxes of extravagantly embellished sushi but explains that he has already eaten. This breaks all the rules of Lunch with the FT but then this is not a man who readily submits to prescription, so I don't make a fuss. Von Trier, 53, is dressed in what I take to be Danish summer casual style, T-shirt, cargo trousers and sandals, which suits his portly figure. He is courteous, a little nervous, and keeps the megalomania, and the truculence, skilfully hidden. He frequently gives little laughs and many of his remarks, one soon gathers, are not meant to be taken entirely seriously. Watching that contentious Cannes press conference on the festival's web archive, it is impossible not to diagnose something of a sense of humour failure among the journalists. But there are, admittedly, few laughs in Antichrist. The film opens with a couple (Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe) making love while their neglected toddler son slips and falls out of a window to his death. They retreat to a cabin in the woods to help them overcome their grief but nature, in its wildest and most primeval form, has the opposite effect: the couple attempt, in graphic and horrific detail, to destroy each other. Forget the bloody mutilations, I say. As the father of a young son, it is the first 10 minutes that are the most unbearable to watch. "Yes," he nods. "I have four children. You think that the more that you have, the easier it gets but that is not how it is. You worry more and more." So it is a film primarily about the intensity of grief? He bridles. He has publicly admitted that the work was born of depression and is reluctant to talk about it in any other terms than as a dream-like expression of "deep anxieties". Was it at least cathartic for him? "The only thing I know is that the practice of making the film was good for me. I wrote it really quickly just to do something instead of lying down looking at the wall. I didn't really care for it while I was making it. I care for it now." I say the film is relentlessly bleak but he demurs. "If you know a little about cognitive therapy, which I have undergone for two years, the way it is written about in the film is quite sarcastic. He [the therapist played by Dafoe] is a very rational man, and one of the jokes is that as a therapist you would, typically, say that anxieties are never real: they are only thoughts. But this film shows the opposite – the more thoughts you have, the more they can become real." I chomp through the excellent sushi as von Trier observes me, which must make for an odd scene. We are surrounded by nature at its most benign, which is hard to square with its savage depiction in the film. "I watch a lot of British documentaries about nature and I saw one about the original forests of Europe, which I found interesting. If you asked me where I feel most secure, it would be in surroundings like this, with lakes and stags, the Romantic forest. But it is this type of environment that is characterised by death and pain to an enormous degree. We all long for this place, which is full of fights between living things." I tell him I am frightened of nature. "That's very clever. I used to be good at nature but not so much now. Of course it is nonsense to call it evil but, after trying to be religious for many years, I just couldn't see a merciful God arranging all this." Von Trier has a typically complicated relationship with religion. He was, he explains, brought up by radical atheist parents (who also happened to be nudists) and describes a conversion to Catholicism when he was 30 as a "typical rebellion from where I came from". He now declares himself an atheist. He says he converted partly because he thought of Catholicism as "fun". Fun? "I know you may not think so if you are a young person from southern Europe. But I saw some very sound things in it: the saints, the Virgin Mary. It was very colourful. And I thought confession was a very good idea. It is good to talk about things. In Protestantism you are a sinner and you can never do anything about it. Much better to go into that little room ... " He sighs. "I am not a good believer, I'm afraid." Did he find his loss of faith traumatic? "To be religious would be fantastic. I am sure it helps you with a lot of things in life. I love nature and life but somehow it is difficult to think that some God has put it all together." I ask how he feels about the reaction to Antichrist. Did he expect the vicious criticism? "No, I didn't. But from my career, I have been used to it. This is the kind of reaction I like – some to like it, some not to like it. And to dislike it to that degree means I have provoked some emotion, which is how it should be." He notes with some amusement that the only problems with censorship have been in Germany, "and in Japan – they have problems with pubic hair. They don't have a problem with sex. But they don't want to see any pubic hair at all. Japanese thrillers are always something to do with hair. I think there is some kind of fetish going on". All the Catholic countries, he says wryly, are fine with it. Von Trier is best known to cineastes as a co-founder of the Dogme 95 movement, a "vow of chastity" compiled with his compatriot Thomas Vinterberg, which espoused the virtues of cinematic realism above all else. In 1998's The Idiots he brought a new level of frankness to the depiction of sex on screen, influencing a whole generation of filmmakers to the extent that it is almost commonplace today. He says he wasn't out to shock but that it came naturally to him. "Being brought up by culturally radical parents, I was very used to nudist camps. The guy behind the supermarket counter, the baker, the postman – nobody had any clothes on. It was kind of funny but not that interesting. It is obvious to me that if a film has a scene to do with sex, I should show it. It is strange not to show it. When I swim in the sea I swim naked because I think it is strange to put on clothes. He pauses. "Of course you get more and more like your parents." The disturbing thought occurs that we have not yet seen von Trier at his most radical. He says one of the "weirdest" things about shooting Dogville (2003) was to hear "very liberal, very intelligent" actors from New York confess that their children had not seen them naked. "That was a complete mystery to me." Dogville provided another controversial von Trier moment: a three-hour, highly stylised, Brechtian critique of small-town America, starring Nicole Kidman, which provoked an understandably defensive reaction from a country the director has never visited. I ask how his relations with the US are going. "I am quite satisfied with the new president. It was about time. Let's see what he can do." Was fear of flying the only reason that he didn't go there? "If I could fly, America wouldn't be the first place I would go. There is an awful lot of American culture in Denmark. In the 1970s, we were more open to other countries' culture. Now it is overwhelming." Was it important that Dogville featured an authentic Hollywood star, to add bite to its critique? "Nicole just wanted to do something with me. It happened to be that." Dogville was followed a couple of years later by the similarly staged Manderlay, the second in what von Trier intended to be a trilogy with the ironic title USA: Land of Opportunities. I ask how the third part was proceeding. "The trouble with doing a trilogy is that there always has to be a third part," he replies ruefully. So why the trilogy? "I am just cruel to myself. I don't know. I thought it might be a sign of maturity. I like directors who keep doing the same kind of thing, like Ken Loach." This from a director known for switching genre from one film to the next? Another deep sigh, another contradiction. "It is also kind of boring to do the same thing. I need something to ignite for my brain to get started." At the moment, he says, there is no part three of his American trilogy in the offing. "Let's see if it comes running." We are interrupted by the arrival of von Trier's wife and his two youngest children, all smiles and bustle, who have just been to the cinema to see a "charming" Danish comedy. That is also a genre he has attempted, he reminds me, with The Boss of it All (2006), with scant success. "I thought it was a nice film, the Danish love comedy. But nobody came to see it. It seems it is not really a comedy when I do it. I tried my best." It is another genre to cross off the list, he says, and promises he has no intention of making a Western. Telling his family that there is sushi left over from our (my) lunch, he goes into the kitchen to make me some green tea. When he returns, I ask if this compulsion to keep switching genres is some kind of intellectual game. "I tend to screw them up, a little bit on purpose. I can use them to do something that doesn't normally happen in those genres." Has he ever considered romantic comedy? He ignores the question. "Michael Jackson just died." Yes, I say, having caught the headlines in the airport that morning. "I think that it's fair enough. He didn't look so happy." But he goes on to say that Jackson was an example of the quality of US culture. "It shows that this system of American commercialism works. It can produce some really interesting things: Prince, Madonna too." This is something rare, to be savoured as much as the sushi: a von Trier paean to US culture. He then admits that he was watching Citizen Kane on television as he was waiting for me to arrive. "I have seen it before. But it is not his best film." He turns out to love The Lady from Shanghai, although he has, surprisingly, not heard of my own favourite Orson Welles work, Chimes at Midnight. I ask what his future plans are. "Nothing," he replies with foreboding. "I am taking some time off, which I am very bad at. All your psychic problems tend to explode when you do nothing." Does he ever come to London. "Yes, but I am terrible on ships." There is a tunnel, I say. "No, I couldn't do that. Do you do that?" I confess a little guiltily that I have no problem with any form of transport whatsoever. "I would have to have a lot of therapy before I did that. I like to stay at home." He calls me a taxi and leads me out, past a well-kept vegetable garden. I express my admiration and we stop for a moment. "It is very fascistic, he says. "You take out the weak and the strong remain. It's like ethnic cleansing." __________________________________ Von Trier's leading ladies on working with the maverick director Lars von Trier is renowned for his intense, difficult, working methods and, especially, for his unsettling and sometimes violent portrayals of women. But what do the actresses who have worked with him say? Emily Watson Björk Nicole Kidman Lauren Bacall Bryce Dallas Howard Charlotte Gainsbourg Quotes compiled by Elizabeth Tyler |
Lunch with Lars von Trier
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