lars von trier - nymphomaniac

it's tough to be a journalist these days

Was a trick missed by not releasing this on valentine's day?

For sure!

For sure!

the bulk of this film is really good imo (and often pretty funny), but the bad bits are indefensible

Where can i see this?

your local porn theatre, james

(I just realised I said "the bulk of this film" is good, I promise I wasn't talking about shia labeowulf's cock double)

Has Pt II screened yet?

I saw both parts back to back at a special event w/Q&A with some of the cast. Did kinda feel like that's how the film ought to be viewed, although all the stuff I hated was in part ii

not read the whole thread but this was just so empty and a little pathetic in its desperation to be controversial. it doesnt really add up to much. the whole lars-using-women-to-tell-his-story angle is so dull now and i dont really buy it. its just a way for him to get his female cast members to more or less degrade themselves for the benefit of his immature need to be shocking. and for a film that hinges on the relationship between a therapist and a sex addict, there is next to no psychological insight. lots of interesting inconsequential intellectual digressions, but you learn nothing about why she is - maybe that IS the big point the movie is trying to make but it felt shallow. and the attempt to whack on some sort of feminist bent at the end is a pretty boring one in 2014: woman has lots of sex = radical feminist statement. felt like lars was trying to make this his baise moi.

i like being provoked but it just felt really superficial here. there are powerful moments, some powerful for just being fucking unbearable and unnecessary (the sadist guy played by of all people billy elliot who she goes to see), and some for the sheer heartbreak of it all (leaving her son - and yes, men might get off lighter for doing that than women, but thats not right either).

i dont know how i would have edited it (part 2 is def the better of the two films) as it almost needs to be this length, but the sex - for all the hype - wasnt even that explicit, and while some of the scenes were def hotter than a lot of prudish critics have made out, i couldnt decide if it was needed or not. but then without all the sex, what kind of film would you have left?! its odd that for such an episodic film, that it never seemed to know where it was going exactly - i think it would have made a better mini series for TV. a lot of the visual sense felt more inspired by TV than cinema too.

the stupidest part of the provocation was the interracial threesome, as after every review seems to have been made to use a shot from that scene, it turns out they dont even have sex, but lars is so fixated on the shock appeal of seeing two erect black cocks, that he lingers on it longer than any other cock shot in the whole movie (nice bit of casual racism with the 'small yellow cocks' line earlier on in the film too).

dreading what the directors cut would be like.

like there's a staggeringly racist scene followed by an idiotic debate about "political correctness" I shit you not

xpost

i liked manderlay but lars has no real concept of anything to do with race - he only seems interested in using/featuring it as a way to goad the audience.

unsimulated sex in arthouse films is kinda old hat now isn't it? this film to me felt exactly as explicit as say jeune & jolie (which istr had no "hardcore" scenes but that distinction in itself doesn't make much difference anymore), I suspect the marketing is the main reason for the fuss there.

The racist bit, if I were a walker-outer/a more principled man, I'd have walked out there. I get that it's just childish shock tactics but racism is racism.

and yeah the feminism 101 "what if a MAN were telling this story" was laughable

uma thurman's bit was great I thought

yeah, i mean, bruno dumont (just off the top of my head) did explicit penetration (with porn actors iirc) in the 90s.

uma was great - such a good/crazy scene.

people were laughing a bit too much when i saw this btw (maybe out of discomfort) - it was funny of course, but i dunno if it was THAT funny!

yeah I had the same thought but I often do when I go to sold-out things like this, it's a very weird atmosphere. when I saw Her this morning with only half a dozen ppl in the theatre nobody laughed even at the obvious jokes (maybe they just didn't find them funny, it's possible)

yeah, the whole 'event' vibe of the screenings made it exciting but also didnt quite fit the type of film it actually is

i think it would have made a better mini series for TV.

as well as the explicit nod to the structure of canterbury tales, decameron, 1001 nights &c, it definitely made me think of a tv show in the way the chapters were framed, maybe how I met your mother? but also something older I think

LVT has talked about some kind of "companion" TV series, doubt that ever actually happens, though.

Of course the sex wasn't going to match to any expectations. People like to do this when it comes to sex in the cinema.

Its not so much "unsimulated sex in arthouse is old". I suppose the difference is who is taking part. Only Stacy Martin is a new face.

TV would never touch this kind of thing - the porn angle would be 'tough' (or Lars would make sure this caused 'problems' with someone) but also he would write idiocy in the screenplay.

This is why cinema is better than TV.

I hope parts I&II get at least a week's worth of screenings in London.

this review is pretty otm.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/10651798/Nymphomanic-review.html

in films like The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville, the joke was always aimed at something grand, important, even unassailable. That’s not to say the audience wouldn’t leave the cinema feeling outraged too, but they were mostly collateral damage. Nymphomaniac, though, doesn’t seem to have much on its mind apart from the people watching it. Von Trier’s films have always been tough on their viewers, but this is the first to feel petty.

LVT is basically cinema's greatest troll.

He has only started making good-to-great cinema w/Antichrist so that rev is wrong.

Nah, Element of Crime, Europa and The Kingdom are masterpieces. He had a lull, but he's always been capable of good-to-great.

breaking the waves was a masterpiece, maybe his most obvious (as in most accessible) masterpiece. ).

I wouldn't place BTW any more/less accessible than (say) Dogville.

http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/bodil__131216224552-575x410.jpg

The text says 'They're coming at the Bodil-awards. Are you?'

― Frederik B, Thursday, 19 December 2013 23:07 (2 months ago) Permalink

The text means, 'They're yawning at the Bodil-awards. Are you?'

Nah, Element of Crime, Europa and The Kingdom are masterpieces. He had a lull, but he's always been capable of good-to-great.

― Frederik B, Sunday, February 23, 2014 3:44 AM (53 minutes ago)

breaking the waves was a masterpiece, maybe his most obvious (as in most accessible) masterpiece.

― StillAdvance, Sunday, February 23, 2014 4:11 AM (25 minutes ago)

these

nyphomaniac falls quite a bit beneath 'good-to-great'. im happy his charlotte gainsbourg trilogy has ended now.

LVT's early genre works were pretty great, Breaking The Waves for Emily Watson and being relatively fresh (misogyny and stupid ending and all). The Idiots arrived at I want to say the height of the Dogma hype, and probably suffered in comparison. He went off the rails with Dancer in the Dark, which was bullshit, and Dogville, where the gimmick really started to feel like a gimmick. Antichrist was just so fucking stupid I just can't bother, unless he completely changes tack and goes in some radically new direction beyond the facile conflation of misogyny and novelty.

thanks, he's making that a pentalogy now xp

Nah, Element of Crime, Europa and The Kingdom are masterpieces. He had a lull, but he's always been capable of good-to-great.

― Frederik B, Sunday, 23 February 2014 11:44 (9 hours ago) Permalink

ok haven't seen the early stuff, thereafter the good-to-greatness hasn't really happened in longer stretches until Gainsbourg started working with him.

Oh, he made bad stuff inbetween his earlier masterpieces as well. His MO isn't good for sustained brilliance. He is always balancing on the edge, and quite frequently falls off. Manderlay might be the worst movie made by a genius director ever. However, his films are never safe, and never uninteresting. Pure crap, possibly, but never uninteresting.

the five obstructions was no masterpiece either! (just made me want to see the jorgen leth original again)

loved the 5 obstructions, something quite touching abt it (seemingly in spite of LVT)

watched the first half of the first part of this last night and it was really fucking tedious. will watch the second half later this afternoon. i loved melancholia and antichrist so would be disappointed if this movie turns out to be as dull as it seems.

Finished pt 1. Dude is such a sadist, especially toward cheerful, scientific-rationalists who find ways to reconcile themselves to a random and indifferent universe by denying the reality of evil. This is definitely a kind of "trolling" as someone said upthread, but it's coming from a sincere, possibly hateful, reactionary place. Still think he's an important director but this current chapter in his Romantic revolt against modernity is less compelling than Melancholia and Antichrist.

I really dug the little visual digressions in Pt 1, felt almost playful. That unfortunately subsides in Pt 2. Really hated the (lazy, predictable) last few minutes.

What a stupid movie. From Emily Watson and Bjork to Nicole Kidman and Kirsten Dunst, Von Trier specializes in putting actresses through ordeals. To say, as a press release, does, that he’s “fascinated by women” is akin to the Orkin man confessing he’s fascinated by roaches. When we learn that Gainsborough is named Joe an hour into the picture, it makes sense: she’s a woman conceived by a man to act like a man. What on first impression looks like a laudable attempt to record the permutations of female sexuality curdles into punishing these women by plotting their movements on stupid virgin-whore schema. Von Trier regards Joe through the eyes of men. Although he may argue that Seligman mediates the narrative, that’s precisely the problem: Von Trier robs her of autonomy, of the right to shape her own story. We know damn well that when Seligman (Skarsgard) explains how delirium tremens works Joe will admit she suffers from a form of it. A friend in Manhattan said several people laughed in the theater after this fraught moment. It’s the only sane reaction: Von Trier shapes Gainsborough’s scenes like a sleazo luring a woman for parking lot sex after impressing her with his knowledge of Bach and polyphony.

i dunno. i really dug it. except for 'the dangerous men' (oof…)

I should probably wait to comment on this after I've watched the second part but I don't know when I'll watch it.

Reminds me of Interview With The Vampire. I'm wondering if LaBeouf is going to turn Skarsgard into a shagger at the end of the second part.

Personally I've never really felt any of the dark energy from Antichrist or this. I liked Antichrist apart from the unconvincing evilness of the mother, but I couldn't be offended by that because I never felt malice in it. It appeared more like a lazy slip up where he forgotten to explain her madness properly. Maybe I'm missing something.

And in this the whole thing feels so fake, blank, robotic, distanced, silly that I have a hard time imagining it coming from some dark emotional place.
It just seems to me like a did this for a laugh or a weird drunken bet to get all these actors in a film featuring hardcore sex, fishing, mathematics, Rammstein, Bach and Poe.
If you really wanted to offend people why would you make this?

But I'm actually kind of enjoying it because it feels different and entertaining enough.

Yeah, perhaps the whole thing about him 'wanting to offend people' has been bullshit all along?

The 330 min version will be coming to DK 10-14 september. I'll try and get tickets, but yeah, can't be that many showings.

Now that I've seen the second part,it mostly reminds me of the crazy pulpy hot blooded but philosophical Japanese comics of the 70s for young men.
I very much doubt Lars was intelluctually or emotionally committed to this film.

you're saying this is von trier doing tezuka? sign me the fuck up.

Nothing like Tezuka, I mean more along the lines of Kazuo Koike and similar authors politically incorrect journeys.

And even though it was kinda fun in places I wouldn't really recommend it. Not quite good enough.

o, less interesting. still intend to get around to it, as i've often loved von trier in the past (the kingdom, breaking the waves, europa, 5 obstructions, etc).

Nothing like Kingdom, Europa, Waves, Dancer, Dogville - agree very much that Trier didn't seem interested in this one (and to me the same goes for Antichrist and Melancholia, feels like the concepts are never wholly developed, a bit lazy)

Fun in places, not very provocative, overlong...

One of the best things about LvT is that he speculates, tries on arguments, takes them as far as they can go (and then some...) then revisits them in later films, tries on something opposite, or slightly askew. Of course, when he fails, when he builds a whole film around bullshit, worthless ideas, as in Manderlay, it all falls flat, flatter than almost anybody else falls flat. But taken as a whole, his filmograpy is all the more vital for it.

Besides the obvious "whoring bed" scene, I almost did a spit-take at the reprise of the Antichrist prologue. Despite his rep his movies are often very funny.

i always thought that part in the end of dogville when one the gangsters holds up a baby and the other one machine guns it was lars' idea of a funny visual gag.

Lars' idea of a funny visual gag is Udo Keir popping out of a vagina. With him on that.

yes! one of the most indelible images in a movie ever. also CHAOS REIGNS is supposed to be at least kind of funny, right

really liked part 1 of the director's cut (it's split on netflix the same way the theatrical release is). everyone describing that part as a comedy p much otm. can definitely see why those who dislike it feel that way.

gonna watch part 2 today. have read descriptions of the thing that everyone found unwatchable, and tbf, it sounds pretty fuckin intense. (not to mention a completely unrealistic depiction of the entirely safe reality of that procedure, but when did LVT care about strict reality when trying to make a point or provoke or both? briefly considered watching the cut version of part 2, but fuck it I'm committed now

The whole point of the unwatchable thing is how unsafe that procedure becomes when it isn't done legally and officially. It's pro that procedure.

right, I didn't think he was against it. just fired it up now, so I'll know soon enough what it's really like.

overall I like this more than dogville and dancer in the dark so far, quite a bit less than melancholia (an all time fave for me)

(on a side note, udo kier's facial expressions continue to be nothing less than hilarious)

finished it. understand why people would find certain bits offensive (and share in that feeling for a few of them), or why they'd find the whole thing maddening. but kind of extraordinary overall.

considering that not that many movies explore or critique nice-guy/dishonest misogyny a la what seligman does at the end, I appreciated this movie for going there and then having joe just say fuck it and clipping him

acting incredible by and large, especially gainsbourg and stacy martin but also uma, christian slater, jamie bell

shia labeouf's scenes were relatively painless at worst and well-handled at best, which for him is a start

Director's Cut >>>>

much harder to watch than the original but, for me, much more rewarding

yeah I'm glad that's the one I chose from the start. got the sense there was as much contextual stuff cut from the US release as there were extreme penetration closeups, violent scenes etc

Finally watched this (the director's cut). All through part 1 I was convinced that Joe was dead and we're watching a metaphorical judgement - her entire life passing before our eyes. I don't know if I could make the same argument after part 2, but killing an evil god/angel/whatever before running down the stairs into hell seems pretty on-brand for LvT.