Director Lars von Trier, left, and actor Matt Dillon pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'The House That Jack Built' at the 71st international film festival, Cannes, southe
Director Lars von Trier, left, and actor Matt Dillon pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'The House That Jack Built' at the 71st international film festival, Cannes, southe
Opinion
There is a certain strand of European filmmaker that is extremely popular at the Cannes Film Festival; white, male, grim-faced (bordering on nihilist) storytellers telling white, male, grim-faced (bordering on nihilist) stories.
Subsequently their success at Cannes is enormously influential on the modern cinemascape. Filmmakers as undeniably significant as Michael Haneke, Bela Tarr, Thomas Vinterburg, Werner Herzog, and, of course, Lars Von Trier, the self-styled enfant terrible of European cinema.
Of all these filmmakers, Von Trier has long carried his weightiness the lightest, with a dash of self-mockery or, perhaps, self-loathing. Yet his work is nevertheless infused with the egomania of a filmmaker pumped up on their own drama.
Von Trier has drawn praise for his films' unabashed willingness to 'go there'; to really push the envelope in violent or uncomfortable ways.
Paul Bettany and Nicole Kidman in Dogville by Lars von Trier
While he's been long praised for his complex, layered roles for women, from Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves to Nicole Kidman in Dogville to Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia it's also been long-rumoured (if not outright confirmed) that the firebrand Danish filmmaker's directorial style is incredibly aggressive. There's plenty of stories detailing his efforts to break actresses down on-set in increasingly toxic and destructive ways.
However, the argument goes, the end result was great art. After all, even those most untouchable of filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick tortured their actresses, and the works they made defined cinema more than debatably any other filmmakers in movie history. The ends justify the means, right?
Then came the Weinstein allegations, and the wave of accusations against those firmly established in cinema. It was only a matter of time until Von Trier's behavior came under the spotlight, and so it was that pervasive rumours that Von Trier abused actress Bjork on the set of his film Dancer in the Dark came to light.
The reasons why Von Trier was invited back to Cannes this year with his serial killer flick The House That Jack Built, stem from the embarrassing-for-all-involved fallout from his Melancholia promotion there, where he jokingly claimed to sympathise with Hitler and the Nazis. Outrage swiftly escalated, and Von Trier was banned from the Festival.
For Von Trier, this cemented the bad-boy image he'd so eagerly cultivated, while for Cannes, pressure built every year to welcome him back. The choice to bring him back this year, of all years, feels particularly mind-boggling. Von Trier's presence furthers the narrative that the greatest of artists are above criticism, attack or consequence, that their work is too vital to be missed.
Forget the fact that Bjork swore never to act again after working with Von Trier - he has a new film about the killing and mutilation of women and children to see!
The director is a controversy magnet, and his latest work seems designed to generate maximum ire. Some have argued that the film, about a man who recounts his life as a serial killer, including graphic depictions of several killings of women, is a kind of apologia for his behavior, so clearly is the central character a stand-in for Von Trier himself.
Bjork in 'Dancer in the Dark', a film by Lars von Trier.
And yet, by all accounts, the filmmaker still takes relish in the abuse and mistreatment of women in his writing and conceiving of story – the first murder depicted in the film sees the victim (played by Uma Thurman) written as so mind-bogglingly repellent and annoying that Jack simply has no choice but to kill her, just to shut her up. As the film goes on it only gets more graphic with every murder.
Von Trier's body of work and public persona has long positioned him as the button-pushing a**hole-genius of the art cinema world (with comparisons to Kanye West seeming apt). This cultivation is particularly canny on Von Trier's part – if everyone already knows he acts this way, further accusations will simply roll off his back.
For all its unassailable praise, much of Von Trier's work feels more and more like empty provocation in search of something interesting to say, though there undeniably remains a large portion of cinema-lovers who respond to his work.
Ultimately, however, this point is (or should be) moot. There are the seismic movements of a great sea-change happening the world over, beginning with cinema, and the continued tolerance of abusive on-set behavior such as Von Trier's is a key factor to ensuring nothing ever really changes below the surface.
There is a larger conversation to be had about how we look at and talk about influential work by monstrous artists that already exists, but steps must be made to avoid repeating the same cycles over and over again. This means limiting not the artistic expression of abusers, but of their presence and acceptance in the public eye.
