‘Festen’: how Thomas Vinterberg made the most shockingly believable display of family dysfunction
In 1995, Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von Trier came up with some new rules for filmmakers, labelling their movement ‘Dogme 95’.
Stressing the importance of filming in a way that was as raw and lacking in artificiality as possible, these films would have to be made on handheld cameras on location, without any special effects or lighting, or even specific props brought onto the set.
The ten rules of Dogme 95 aren’t entirely sustainable, but Vinterberg and Von Trier were passionate about executing a new method of capturing truth, and Festen, released in 1998, became the first official Dogme film. Also known as The Celebration, Vinterberg presents us with one of cinema’s most dysfunctional families, and with its fast pace and naturalistic filming, it feels like we’re a member of the party, swept up in some of the most intense revelations you could possibly stomach.
Opening up the film is an exchange between the two brothers, Christian and Michael, who bump into each other as they approach the family-owned hotel that has been reserved for a big party to celebrate their father’s 60th birthday. Kicking his wife and two small children out of the car, Michael instructs Christian to get in and have the others walk, offering us our first indication that we’re going to be met with some unlikeable characters, but little do we know how much more detestable they’re going to be.
Once we’re at the property, we see Michael grab his sister Helene’s breast in jest, and we soon realise that this is tame for him. As the narrative unfolds, family truths are uncovered while revealing the ugliness at the heart of several characters, most notably Michael and his father, Helge, wherein accusations of incestual and pedophilic abuse are exposed by Christian, who claims that his father raped him and his twin sister, who recently committed suicide, and how his mother has pulled the wool over her eyes to it all.
Meanwhile, Michael is openly racist towards Helene’s new boyfriend and beats the staff member who got pregnant, proving himself to be utterly repugnant beyond redemption.
Vinterberg takes such an unflinching look at this family, who have attempted to gather for celebration, serving up the darkest possible truths instead, which leads to the dinner guests awkwardly staring at their plates as Christian is deemed insane for speaking such accusations. What makes Festen so fascinating is how it really draws us into its world, which feels enclosed in a bubble we cannot burst, with the hotel existing as a microcosm of society.
With shots that look down on the inhabitants of a room, almost like a CCTV view, or ones that place us right next to a character in the car, on the bed, or on the floor, we get to know them a little too well. We see them having sex, showering, fighting, and lying half-unconscious on the floor, all of their dignity stripped away as these uncomfortable truths come out, with Vinterberg destroying the perfect upper-class image that the family tries to maintain.
If you don’t acknowledge something, then it can’t be real, so when Christian boldly reveals the truth of his childhood trauma and the reason for his sister’s death, his parents sit quietly, not fighting back or making much of a scene. But of course, when someone is constantly kicking at the horse, refusing to back down from exposing the truth, it’s only going to be a matter of time before the horse gives in, so eventually, Helge admits to what he has done, no longer trying to act as though he has no idea what is going on, showing that this kind of deception is rife among the upper classes, where dark secrets pervade and futile attempts to protect status and riches only cause just as much damage.
It’s a damning film, and it’s all the more powerful shot with these avant-garde Dogme 95 techniques, such that you can’t look away as the camera moves from one shocking moment to another; the pacing is incredible.
Above all, Festen is a tale of corruption and shame, with the desire to reveal the truth prevailing in spite of everything. Christian is deemed mad, which is an easy thing to believe when you don’t want to accept the truth, but Vinterberg makes it clear who the ridiculous ones really are. You never know what secrets are lurking among families, but under the entrapment of a birthday celebration, everything comes out of the woodwork, exploding at one hundred miles an hour across grainy 35mm film and shaky camerawork, making for an experience to be felt, rather than merely observed.
