![]() What lets the film down far more than its middle-England baiting ‘degeneracy’ (which, according to the aforementioned tabloid demagogue, fully confirms “our jihadist enemies’ view of us as a society in the last stages of corruption and decay”) is its frequent silliness. As that often subversive streak in populist mainstream banality Roger Ebert has so succinctly put it: “In this case, perhaps, a film should not mean, but be” These moments should be considered on the same level as the remarkable reprised cutaways to claustrophobic disembodied close-ups of Gainsbourg’s body parts (which are accompanied by brilliant sound design – insufficient kudos seems to have gone to Kristian Eidnes Andersen for this job) in that they might not be ‘necessary’ but they’re surely effective. The film’s punctuations of visceral sensationalism do not serve any propulsive narrative purpose: coherence leaves by the window when the disembowelled fox sings at the end of act two. ![]() The scenes of extreme violence are not about Dafoe ejaculating blood or Gainsbourg circumcising herself with rusty scissors they are Dafoe ejaculating blood or Gainsbourg circumcising herself with rusty scissors (not literally of course, although I’m sue Von Trier was as disappointed about this as he was when the cast of The Idiots refused to actually take part in an orgy)Īs the director has stated, “Scenes were added for no reason and images were composed free of logic or dramatic thinking” and so for these gruesome moments a symbolic train-through-tunnel-innuendo simply would not suffice as it does when the audience need to know, say, that the central characters’ husband is having an affair. This evokes the Hays’ code era contention that intimating and not showing requires more creativity blah blah…and is entirely missing the point. The debate, though (with the exception of one furious Daily Mail incendiary who would apparently rather inflict the torture endured by both central characters upon Von Trier than have it pollute our cinema screens), has mainly been fought on the grounds of whether actually showing the grisly is ‘necessary’ (as if anything in art is ‘necessary’). The fact that he has recently suggested himself as an analogue for Strindberg certainly doesn’t help dispel such accusations and, ostensibly, neither does Gainsbourg’s nuevo-erinye catatonics and the resultant graphic violence which feature so prominently in the film (the latter of which being the reason for much of the controversy). Condemnations of misogyny have dogged the Danish filmmaker throughout his career: he mutilated and murdered Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves hanged Bjork in Dancer in The Dark repeatedly raped Nicole Kidman in Dogville and now he, apparently, posits Charlotte Gainsbourg (and all womankind at large) as evil incarnate. This memorable outing saw Barney finally sober up thanks to an embarrassing incident at a party, with the episode tracking his recovery and ending with a caffeine-loving but sober Barney heading into a bright future (the caffeine addiction being an element added by one Simpsons writer who witnessed the same thing happen to friends of his in recovery).At fifty-three years old Lars Von Trier is not so much l’enfant any longer, but he’s certainly still terrible, to which the furore accompanying Antichrist attests. The first time that the episode was pitched, the story never made it to the screen as The Simpsons’ then-showrunner felt it hewed too close to an episode the writers were already workshopping, the classic “Duffless.” Understandably, the writers wanted to focus more on the Simpson family themselves, but after this setback, Barney’s sobriety episode ended up being held off until season 11 in the standout installment “Days of Wine and D’Oh’ses”. Even when The Simpsons was playing Barney’s drinking for laughs, as early as season 4 voice actor Dan Castellaneta had pitched an episode wherein Barney would sober up for good.
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