The Idiots

Originally published on 16/08/2023 on Letterboxd

“She let me hit cause I’m goofy”: The Movie. Went into this pretty much entirely blind, and since I’m largely unfamiliar with pre-2000s Von Trier (with the exception of the excellent The Kingdom), discovering what this is actually about was one of the funniest experiences I’ve ever had. 

There’s an elasticity to his form here that I can’t recall having seen so prominently featured elsewhere in his filmography- even beyond its embodiment of the purest principles of Dogme 95, there’s a resistance to succumbing to the grotesque that late-period Trier largely forgoes, instead heightening the various psychosexual impotencies identified here unto an apocalyptic scale. Much of the provocation here rings rather hollow, too- there’s only so much hurling of ableist slurs and visceral sadism via humiliation rituals that I can stand here before it becomes rather grating. 

That being said, I was caught off-guard by how unusually sweet this is at times- of course, the occasional interspersions of a transcendental sentimentality is something that Melancholia (his magnum opus) utilizes too, but the structuring of memory as the gradual formation and decay of a rather adolescent community (complete with hazing rituals) here is often affecting in a manner that reminded me more of Linklater than anything else that Trier has made.