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| One pretty poor poster for Lars Von Trier's Zentropa |
An American idealist comes to Germany in 1945 to "do something good for the country", becoming a sleeping car conductor through a favor by his local uncle, but he soon gets himself mixed up in a hasty marriage and a dubious sabotage group.
Zentropa is Danish master co-writer-director Lars Von Trier's (Breaking the Waves (1996)) concluding film in his Europe trilogy, (also comprised by The Element of Crime/Forbrydelsens Element (1984) and Epidemic (1987).) It is an opulent film and a technically and stylistically dizzying piece, which plays around with narration, B/W and color, rear-projection and much more, not to attain common realism but rather to refer to a wealth of past cinematic works (Touch of Evil, Casablanca, the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean and more) and to induce us in a hypnotic state that's central to its narrative. Non-Europeans might view the film as extremely eccentric, high-brow or even pretentious. It isn't. Its swims around in heavy thematic waters, dealing with idealism clashing with guilt and sin, tied up also on continents, more specifically North America as opposed to Europe.
Jean-Marc Barr (City of Shadows/La Cité (2010)) is Von Trier's most beautiful male protagonist to date and a great central element of Zentropa. Ernst-Hugo Järegård (Valhalla (1986)) stands out among the other actors in a peculiar and disarming role, which points ahead to his great turn as Stig Helmer in Von Trier's great horror comedy TV-series The Kingdom/Riget (1994-97)). Zentropa is full of humor as well as references to primal anxiety states, side-qualities in its deft plot that at times smacks of Kafkaesque absurdity and Dostoyevskian individuality and passion. SPOILER It also contains a drowning scene that must go down in cinema history as among the worst (meaning best) of its kind.
Zentropa is one of a kind, a damned interesting and incredibly enticing film of impressive scope, vision and willpower, the work of a master filmmaker reaching, for the first time, the height of his abilities. Von Trier co-wrote, once again, with Niels Vørsel (The Element of Crime).
Related posts:
Lars Von Trier: Nymphomaniac (2013) short version, vol. 1 & vol. 2, or, Lars Von Trier's Suck It
Melancholia (2011) - Von Trier's heightened reality doomsday reflections
Antichrist (2009) - Von Trier's cabin-in-the-woods psycho-horror
The Boss of It All/Direktøren for det Hele (2006) - Von Trier's hilarious absurd comedy
Dear Wendy (2005) - Vinterberg and Von Trier's unpopular, gun-themed megaflop (writer)
Dogville (2003) - Von Trier's implacable, truly unique drama
Top 10: The best big flop movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Dancer in the Dark (2000) or, Selma the Immigrant
Epidemic (1987) - Von Trier's trippy, bizarre second film
The Element of Crime/Forbrydelsens Element (1984) - Von Trier's ultra-strange debut
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 4 mil. $
Box office: 1.45 mil. $ (North America, Denmark and Sweden only)
= Unknown (but probably a huge flop)
[Zentropa premiered May 12 (Cannes) and runs 114 minutes. The film is influenced by Franz Kafka's novel Amerika (1911-14). It was shot in various places in Poland and in Denmark in Copenhagen and in Nordisk Film's studio. The financing of the film, which was Von Trier's biggest up to the point, featuring a large, international cast, was a collaboration between 6 European countries, marking the future way Von Trier would get his films financed. The title was changed to Zentropa for the American release so as not to clash with Agnieszka Holland's Europa Europa (1990). The film won 3 prizes in Cannes (Best Artistic Contribution, the Jury Prize and the Technical Grand Prize), but when Von Trier learned he did not win the main prize for Zentropa, he gave the judges the finger and stormed out from the ceremony. An overview of the film's theatrical performance isn't available: 31,837 paid admission in its native Denmark, making approximately 0.3 mil. $. The film made almost half that in Sweden, and 1 mil. $ in the US, where it was shown in just one cinema. This makes up just 1.45 mil. $. If Zentropa was saved by French, Italian or Spanish audiences, we don't know, but it seems unlikely that such a fact would have been kept a secret, and so it looks like a huge flop. The film won the Danish Robert and Bodil awards as Best Danish Film of the Year. Zentropa is fresh at 85 % with a 7.3 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]
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