“I need a little more flesh and blood”: the filmmaking style Lars von Trier hates most
Love him or loathe him – and many people do, often over the course of the same film – it can’t be denied that Lars von Trier has always been one of cinema’s most singular voices. His movies aren’t for everyone, nor are they supposed to be, but he’s built a career on challenging those preconceptions.
Never too far from controversy, whether it’s events depicted on-screen or incidents when cameras aren’t rolling, von Trier occupies a fascinating position in cinema. Even though the majority of his features don’t pay much heed to the typical conventions of the medium, they’re unmistakably his and couldn’t possibly be imagined by anyone else, never mind directed by them.
He may not have a definitive style or aesthetic, and the stories he tells are often impossible to categorise, but nobody’s ever going to be left under the impression they’ve seen anything other than a von Trier original once the credits come up. Being so instantly recognisable without adhering to type is impossible to achieve by design, which speaks volumes to just how much of a maverick the filmmaker has always been.
Whether through naturalistic performances, ambitious narratives, unflinching explorations of potent subjects such as sacrifice, mental health, repression, and psychosexuality, or his boundary-pushing refusal to deem anything so off-putting that it can’t be committed to the screen, von Trier is an entity unto himself in world cinema.
While several of his more grounded works have evoked the techniques and teachings of cinéma vérité, it’s best not to make that comparison when he’s within earshot because he’s sure to shut it down. When speaking to the BBC about the minimalist avant-garde trappings of Dogville, he refuted any embrace of the term by conceding how it’s his own perceived limitations that find him returning to so many of the same themes over and over again under different guises.
“I think I have a very limited range of characters and stories. I’m just doing it in different ways,” he said. “I hate verités because I need a little more flesh and blood. I start with something that you would call a verité. Then I try somehow to defend it by putting on a style.” He’s not actively shying away from the term but rather admitting that while it may look that way on the surface, he’s always seeking to put his own stamp on many of the tried-and-trusted spokes on the cinematic wheel.
The term ‘verité’ certainly doesn’t apply to Dogville anyway, at least not by its strictest definition. Born from documentarian origins and applied to observational cinema, the focus largely falls on realism. As an experimental nine-chapter story with a prologue that unfolds on a sparsely decorated soundstage to give the impression of a filmed play, von Trier tossed rigid authenticity out the window in favour of something that intentionally blurs the lines between fiction, reality, and performance.
