Lars von Trier is a Danish filmmaker who makes films about religion, sex and violence. He called himself a genius at the age of 12, dropped out of secondary school, antagonised his professors at film school and left his wife three weeks after the birth of their second child. The director also periodically falls into depression, constantly suspects he has cancer and has a deep-seated fear of doctors.
In this biography you will learn about:
- Lars von Trier's childhood in a permissive, 'no rules' family;
- his search for identity, a fascination with Nazism, women's clothing, and friendship;
- his fear of making the first move in relationships, his sexual experiences, and his two wives;
- his approach to filmmaking and unsimulated sex.
Childhood: a breeding ground for fears
Lars von Trier was born on 30 April 1956 in Copenhagen. His parents, Inger and Ulf Trier, were civil servants. They espoused left-wing values and were accordingly advocates of 'free-range upbringing': a child should be treated as a small adult and allowed to develop in whatever direction suited them. Lars was largely left to his own devices, and it did him no good. What the boy actually wanted was for someone to tell him what was and wasn't allowed — he felt lost in his boundless freedom.
The director himself says he grew up in a "no" kind of family, where arguments broke out over the smallest things: "a conversation always started with the word 'no' — so there was a chance it might turn into a discussion. If you said 'yes' and agreed with everything, the exchange became pointless."
In childhood, Lars and his mother developed a relationship in which it was difficult to tell where one person's identity ended and the other's began. As the director recalls, "there was a magical bond between us — I believed that whatever she [his mother] said would come true." His mother was mentally unstable: she complained of headaches, spent hours playing solitaire, and had a terror of doctors.
This fear was so overwhelming that she could not even bring herself to say goodbye to her dying husband in hospital. Lars inherited her dread of anyone in a white coat: he goes to great lengths to avoid medical institutions and consults only his sister's husband about his health — even though the man is merely an optometrist.
The director remembers his father with warmth. Ulf would often hold his son and play with him to make up for his wife's emotional distance. At the same time, the man had his principles: he never gave money to beggars, argued with Jehovah's Witnesses, and regarded missionaries as servants of the devil. Trier Sr. enjoyed teasing his children and putting them in awkward situations. "He would limp exaggeratedly in front of passers-by, balance his hat on his walking stick, drag his foot, or find some other way to pass himself off as mentally disabled. He was quite funny!" the director recalls.
Lars experienced his father's Jewish heritage as part of his own identity, and in his youth he even attended synagogue. However, on her deathbed his mother confessed that Lars's biological father was in fact her boss. The revelation was a shock to the director. What troubled and at the same time moved him most was that Ulf had never let on that he was raising a child who was not his own.
Lars's brother is named Ole, and he is ten years older than the director. The dreamy Lars and the straightforward Ole are not close, and it is hard to believe they grew up in the same household. Ulf and Inger raised their children to be uninhibited, so they sent their elder son to a school that prized creative freedom and had no rules. It did not work out well, since Ole's temperament was ill-suited to that kind of environment. To avoid repeating the mistake, his parents enrolled their second child in a conservative school with strict discipline.
For young Lars, this turned out to be its own ordeal: he could not make sense of the contrast between having to raise his hand to go to the toilet at school and being free to do whatever he liked at home. Trier is reluctant to talk about his school years and remains convinced that his parents should have swapped him and Ole when choosing their schools.
As a child, Lars von Trier's two greatest fears were nuclear war and appendicitis. Nuclear war needs little explanation; appendicitis terrified the boy because it would mean having to seek medical help. On long evenings Lars would lie in bed trying to work out whether his stomach was hurting. Sometimes the panic grew so intense that he would drag his mattress under the table and sleep there. Beside him he kept a hot-water bottle in case of appendicitis and a bowl in case of sudden vomiting, along with headache tablets and a damp cloth to press against his forehead. Every evening Lars prepared his refuge and went through the same rituals in an attempt to calm himself down.
"After much deliberation I decided that, all things considered, I still preferred appendicitis to nuclear war. With appendicitis I could simply run off into the woods somewhere, hide, and die quietly without anyone disturbing me. I would at least have been able to control what happened. But nuclear war… every time I heard an aeroplane overhead I lay there trembling from head to toe, absolutely certain that this was it — that it had begun," Lars von Trier recounts.
Like all children, the future screenwriter played with the neighbourhood boys in the street, climbed trees, cut paths through the reeds by the lake and organised treasure hunts. He was always the one who set things in motion and decided what they would do that day.
The boy brimmed with ideas, and his parents encouraged his creative gifts: his mother admired his drawings, and his father took down a detective novel at his dictation. Lars invented the mystery story at the age of six, when he still could not write. He was also fascinated by technology and all things mechanical, so he was overjoyed when his maternal uncle gave him a small camera and some old film reels.
At the age of 12, Lars von Trier landed the lead role in the television series Secret Summer after writing to the director on his own initiative. "The acting role in a comedy didn't appeal to me much, but the technical side fascinated me enormously," he explained. After the shoot he stayed on to work at the studio, setting up lights and running errands. In an interview marking his starring role, the twelve-year-old Lars von Trier declared that he considered himself a genius.
Between the ages of eleven and twelve, Trier began shooting his first works: short animated films. He cites Donald Duck comics as one of his sources of inspiration: "One should not underestimate the dramatic influence of Donald Duck on an entire generation. I am absolutely certain that traces of those comics can be found in everything I do. Donald Duck is the common denominator, at least for my generation, because at the age when we were reading him, a person is at their most open."
The teenage years: finding oneself
As a teenager, Lars von Trier dropped out of school, which he despised. Together with his friend Torkild Thennesen, who had also declared a boycott of formal education, the future director spent his time doing exactly as he pleased. The two young men argued about politics and philosophy, made trips to Copenhagen, discussed the books they had read, wandered through museums and listened to music. They often passed the time at Torkild's house, where Lars would sprawl uninvited on the sofa or empty the refrigerator without asking. Trier says it was "enormously interesting — it was like a holiday, only three years long!"
The friends considered conventional schooling pointless and so devised their own curriculum, which included literature, film history and painting. Torkild recalls that period: "He opened up a great deal that was new to me, and being with him was always fun and interesting. Without that, I think almost no one would have wanted anything to do with him — he is, after all, a very particular and contradictory person."
Lars became captivated by the aesthetics of Nazism — something that would cause him considerable trouble later in his career. He even collected Third Reich memorabilia and dressed up in Nazi uniforms. Torkild recalls how, at seventeen, they "sat in Lars's room, its walls covered in Che Guevara posters, furnished with beer crates and foam-rubber mattresses cut to follow the contours of the room, watching in fascination as an old 8mm film showed a Second World War German fighter plane going into battle against a thundering rock soundtrack."
"Lars and I were both captivated by the way the combination of image and sound could generate feeling," says Thennesen. Another of Trier's youthful friends, Tøger Seidenfaden, is equally convinced that what drew the director was the surface of Nazism: "it was not political at all, but rather a cultural or aesthetic act of rebellion — on one hand he was fascinated by certain things for their visual appeal, and on the other he enjoyed the consternation it caused among his parents and their friends."
Seidenfaden emphasises that 'everything connected with Lars was shot through with an us-and-them opposition.' Trier and Tennesen's self-education was driven by the same spirit of resistance: they rebelled against any restrictions or obstacles placed in their way. Lars was searching for himself — inspired by David Bowie, he tried on women's clothing and military uniforms, provoking those around him at every turn.
The future director fell seriously in love for the first time. His chosen one was Torkhild's cousin, Birgitte. Trier recalls the relationship with irony: 'She was very French — and wildly provocative. She slept around constantly. On a single train journey she could manage to sleep with three strangers in the toilet. She introduced me to intercourse and kept helping me along until I had fully mastered the art. I really liked that matter-of-factness and openness.'
His relationships with the opposite sex generally came to nothing: Lars disliked drawing attention to himself or making the first move, and on the rare occasions when something did develop, he tried to control the girl as much as possible — which few of them appreciated.
Trier enrolled in preparatory courses for university admission. Although he completed the programme as an external student, returning to study was hard going. He constantly needled his fellow students and teachers, devoting less energy to learning the material than to poring over the examination regulations. The rules kept changing, and Lars turned this to his advantage, informing examiners that they were of course welcome to ask him a supplementary question — but that this was not, strictly speaking, within the rules. He was particularly adroit at turning around the provision stating that grades should reflect not only the examiners' assessment but also the teacher's — Lars argued that since he was completing the course as an external student, he was effectively his own teacher, and his views should therefore be taken into account.
Trier maintains that only two grades were acceptable to him: 'I always used to joke that if you [the teacher] cannot give me the maximum 13 points, give me 0. It was an all-or-nothing wager. Either brilliant, or completely worthless.'
After the courses, Lars applied to four higher-education institutions: art school, theatre school, journalism school and film school. He was rejected by all of them. Even so, Trier was convinced that the fault lay not with him but with the universities: 'I was certain I could do anything. And that goes for any field of knowledge — nuclear physics included, say — if I ever needed to, I'd read up on it and grasp it straight away. I mean, all right, maybe there are things I don't understand right now, but if they can do it, then I most certainly can too.'
The start of a career: first provocations
Lars von Trier was finally admitted to the film studies department at the University of Copenhagen. He understood it was merely a stepping stone to the Danish National Film School, and so made no effort to study diligently, deciding instead to make a couple of films with his friends. Both The Orchid Gardener and Menthe — la bienheureuse are full of provocative sexual scenes and reflect their creator's preoccupations with girls and art.
The aristocratic particle 'von' appears for the first time in the credits of The Orchid Gardener. A number of legends circulate in film circles about how it came about. Some say a teacher bestowed it on Trier in exasperation at his arrogance. Others are convinced it stems from a well-worn family joke: apparently Lars's grandfather Svend Trier used to sign himself Sv.Trier — a form that in German suggests aristocratic lineage — which led Germans to routinely add the courteous prefix 'von'. This was considered highly amusing given the grandfather's Jewish roots, which placed him about as far from the German nobility as possible. Lars himself says he was using 'von' before he ever enrolled at university.
In the autumn of 1979, the Danish National Film School opened its doors to a 23-year-old Lars. The admissions committee was divided over Trier, and he came close to not making it through the selection process. Rector Henning Camre described it this way: "The final decision was mine, and if Lars was a mistake, he was certainly one of the most interesting ones."
Looking back on film school, Lars says that "not one of the teachers commanded any respect from me, but the whole world of technique was opened up to me." He was sceptical, pestered his professors, flouted the rules and quarrelled with his classmates. He once even wrote on a fence: "The Film Institute is dead — long live cinema!"
Lars von Trier was not alone in his rebelliousness: he struck up a friendship with seventeen-year-old Thomas Gislason, who had already studied in America, and with cinematography student Tom Elling. The future director described the beginning of their friendship this way: "Everyone and their mother warned Tom and Thomas away from me, on the grounds that my company was supposedly bad for them — personally and professionally. I was a bad influence. But we thought everything everyone else was doing was utterly pointless nonsense."
The trio made strange films: experimenting with technique and form, trying to reach the viewer's unconscious and provoking with their subject matter. Their teachers laughed and shook their heads, dismissing it all as foolishness with no artistic value. The turning point came with the film Nocturne, which won a prize at the Munich Youth Film Festival — something no one from the school had managed before. After that, the young men were allowed to do as they pleased. And the students themselves were convinced they were creating genuine works of art. The friends even hung a sign on the door of their room: "We are not making films here. We are making history."
The graduation film Images of a Relief was another provocation: Nazi imagery, chains, actors with Down syndrome, fire and harsh contrasting light. But more controversial still was a plot that presented a Nazi as a victim. Lars's aunt, after watching it, cried out: "I refuse to believe this!" The institute was equally shocked.
The E Trilogy
Lars von Trier has no patience for directors who are afraid to move beyond a single style. To ensure he never fell into that trap, he promised himself he would radically change his approach every three films. Trier's body of work can therefore be divided into trilogies, the first of which was the E Trilogy. It comprises The Element of Crime (1984), Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991). All three films share a common thread: a mood of decay, motifs of destruction and Nazi themes.
The Element of Crime, 1984
The team. Lars von Trier shot his first feature film, The Element of Crime, with the same student circle — alongside Thomas Gislason and Tom Elling.
The plot. A police detective tracks a serial killer who preys on young girls. Gradually, he fails to notice that he has become the instrument of the very man he is trying to catch. Trier's own commentary on the script, many years later: "It was a detective mystery in which the detective was the murderer. But honestly… I remember the plot itself only vaguely."
The technical side. The image itself was what mattered most in the film. Lars, Thomas and Tom sourced special sodium lamps that bathed everything in a yellow light — something the director was thrilled by: "Everything became magical!"
The shoot.Many of the shoots took place underground in sewage pipes, which meant, in Trier's own words, that 'the actors sat in a rubber dinghy and floated around in shit, while the crew refused to go down and stayed up top.' Other scenes, by contrast, were filmed in the air. Despite his fear of heights, Lars flew with a camera in a helicopter — though the cabin door was always left open so he could step out (!) whenever he felt like it. The director also climbed an unfastened crane that toppled over in the wind after filming had wrapped.
On one occasion Trier even drove half-naked scuba divers into icy water and made them stand there so long that one of them lost consciousness. And for the final scenes Lars forced the crew to butcher the carcasses of freshly slaughtered domestic animals, because on screen there simply didn't seem to be enough bodies.
Reception.The Element of Crime was not greeted with universal acclaim, but it did not go unnoticed either. For the first time in many years, a Danish film was selected for the competition programme at Cannes, where it received the Grand Prize of the Superior Technical Commission.
Epidemic, 1987
The team.After the shoot of The Element of Crime, Lars fell out with Tom and Thomas, as he sought to draw all attention to himself and left his friends in the shadows. As a result, the three college friends stopped working together and each went their separate way.
Funding.Most investors were wary of Trier and reluctant to work with him, so for a time the director was forced to sit idle.
For his new film Europa — which would be the final part of the trilogy — Lars asked the Film Institute for nine million kroner, only to be told that no more than five million could be allocated to a single picture. He exclaimed: 'Perfect! We'll make a film for one million first [Epidemic], and then another for nine [Europa].'
A million was a laughably small sum, so everything was done on the cheap. 'It really was that superficial. We didn't try at all. We just needed to get it made as quickly as possible so we could move on to the second film,' Trier recalls.
Plot.Epidemic came about on a whim: two writers — played by Lars himself and his friend Niels Vørsel — lose their screenplay on the computer and are forced to write a new one in five days. They invent a story about an epidemic, but through a strange set of circumstances the disease materialises in reality and spreads across Europe.
Reception.The film received muted reviews, as it had been made in haste and without any carefully worked-out detail. The newspaper Information described it as 'a minor self-indulgent showpiece.' Even so, it already contains hints of The Kingdom — the series that would bring Trier widespread recognition — in its secret society of doctors, its hospital atmosphere and its caustic humour.
Europa, 1991
The team.Lars von Trier made the final film of the 'E trilogy' together with Peter Aalbæk. The two met at a party, when Peter — a student at the Film School — asked Lars and his group to pay the entrance fee: 'They were bald and in leather jackets, had just crawled out of the sewers, and commanded enormous respect from everyone there. My friends thought we should let them in for free, to which I said: absolutely not — they pay or they leave,' Aalbæk recalled.
Plot and production.The black-and-white film Europa follows a young American idealist in post-war Germany. Filming took place in the summer of 1990 in the semi-ruined towns of eastern Poland. 'In one town we stayed at a hotel called the Holiday Inn, which was, of course, a name only. A working-class village hotel, completely run down. The curtains hung on three hooks out of twenty, the tap water was an absolute rust-red, mud was everywhere — and, God, what a good time we had!' Lars von Trier recalled of the conditions.
Technical aspects.The film is more concerned with technique than with narrative, and so every frame is immaculate — yet the picture as a whole feels overly polished and, as a result, dull. Although the director was quick to proclaim Europa a work of genius upon its release, years later he speaks of it rather differently: 'I think it is a strange, superficial film stamped by technical virtuosity.' That very mechanical perfection was recognised at Cannes, where the film received the Technical Prize and a Special Jury Prize.
Cecilia: the first wife
In 1987, Lars von Trier married a woman named Cecilia. They had met a couple of years earlier on the overnight train from Copenhagen to Stockholm: a mutual friend brought Cecilia to Lars's compartment, where he spent the entire journey complaining of an unbearable headache and a terror of tunnels. After that trip, Lars von Trier decided he would marry her, and told her so a few months later. Cecilia burst out laughing and turned him down — she wanted a calm, level-headed husband with whom she could have children and live a quiet life. The eccentric, slightly peculiar director friend was not the right man for that role.
But, as Lars recalls, he 'was very persistent and spent several years besieging Cecilia': he bought an engagement ring, invited her to Cannes and pestered her friends with declarations that he intended to marry her.
To rid herself of the persistent Lars, Cecilia suggested visiting some friends who had just had their third child. She was counting on him taking one look at real family life and making a run for it. Instead, 'he got in the car without a word, put my old dog in the back seat, and we actually went — and he was very warm and charming with my friends,' she recalls. Afterwards they stopped by a country house, where 'they were suddenly sitting side by side, and Lars was talking about the birds on the marshes and how much he loved fishing.' At that moment Cecilia understood that 'both of them were in the mood to build a nest.' From then on, they were together.
Trier moved in with her almost immediately, and set about painting the walls and relaying the tiles. She valued her husband 'for his intelligence, his sense of humour and his passion for order.' The newlyweds divided the household duties equally: the director took parental leave with their daughter Agnes and picked her up from nursery.
Zentropa and The Kingdom, 1994
In 1992, Lars von Trier and Peter Aalbæk Jensen founded a production company — Zentropa.
One of its first projects was the television series The Kingdom, which proved a springboard for Lars's career. The director himself admits that he had simply intended to raise money for Zentropa, and so relied on tried-and-tested devices to entertain an audience: mysterious goings-on in a hospital.
Lars also appeared in the series as an actor, delivering summaries of each episode in a dinner jacket — though below the waist he was often wearing only underwear, since the camera framed only the upper half of his body.
The response to the series exceeded all expectations: the sardonic humour, unconventional camerawork and intricate plot did nothing to strip Trier of his reputation as an oddball director, but Denmark could now declare with some pride that if he was an eccentric, at least he was its own.
Bente: the second wife
On the very first day Lars took his daughter Agnes to school, he met her teacher, Bente Frege. At first Trier would stop by to ask about his daughter's progress, but over time their conversations grew longer and ranged further afield.
Bente recalls that period like this: 'Yes, I could see that he liked me, but we didn't know each other at all. It was sheer madness — meeting this man!'
Meanwhile, Lars's relationship with Cecilia had reached a dead end, while his meetings with Bente brought him ever greater joy. 'Things were a complete mess in my family… and all around me, everywhere, things were a complete mess. I felt I was ready to die. Then I thought: suppose I want to go on living — fine, who can help me? And I realised that the one person who could help me was that very Bente, whom I barely knew at all,' the director recalls.
Lars von Trier and his second wife Bente Frege
Trier's psychiatrist recalls that he came to him and announced: 'I am so in love with a girl that I want to leave my wife, and I intend to tell her so.' To which the doctor replied: 'Don't you dare do that.' But as everyone knows, telling Lars not to do something is the surest way to make him do it.
The director went to Bente and told her he wanted to marry her. He gave her 24 hours to think it over. As Lars reasoned, 'I proceeded from the assumption that no woman on earth could possibly be interested in me. When you give a woman twenty-four hours to think, you do it only because you expect to be turned down. If she had said no, I would have got divorced all the same. But she said yes. And that was absolutely incredible.'
Lars and Bente then went home to their respective spouses and announced their intention to divorce. At the time, Cecilia was bedridden with pelvic girdle separation following the birth of their second daughter and could barely move. She 'said that if he were a dog, he ought to be put down. But what can you do — Bente is a very lovely person, and it's terribly easy to fall in love with her. The fact that he left in a not very graceful way doesn't mean that something bad lies ahead of them.' The divorce was swift.
Bente took on the care of their two sons and freed her husband from domestic responsibilities, allowing him to devote himself entirely to his work. Trier admits that Bente always considers his films wonderful, even before she has read the script. At one point during the making of Antichrist, she praised the film, whereupon Trier reasonably objected that she hadn't seen it, to which Bente replied: 'I haven't, but your films are always wonderful.'
Lars von Trier had two daughters from his first marriage and twin boys from his second. The director worries that his fears and neuroses might be passed on to them, and so makes an effort to be a good father and spend more time with his sons. He used to tease the growing Benjamin and Ludwig by telling them they each owed him fifteen thousand kroner — the cost of the IVF treatment that had brought them into the world. 'Why don't you start paying it back now? With interest!' he jokes with the boys.
The Golden Heart Trilogy and Dogme 95
True to his vow, Lars von Trier changed his style after three films. The second trilogy, Golden Heart, comprises Breaking the Waves (1996), The Idiots (1998), and Dancer in the Dark (2000). Each film centres on the figure of a woman who, in the director's words, 'is capable of pure sacrifice.'
Breaking the Waves, 1996
Plot. Breaking the Waves tells the story of a woman 'innocent enough to fuck her way to heaven.' That is Lars von Trier's own quote. According to Peter Schepelern, a friend of the director, Lars decided to bring together in the film 'two of the most powerful forces on which works of art are so often built — deep religious faith and intense erotic desire.' The director also admits that he wanted to try something new and to challenge his audience with as sentimental a genre as the melodrama.
Filming. The film was shot in Scotland, which Trier had to reach by sea. On the crossing, he suffered one of the worst panic attacks of his life, and by the time he set foot on land he was in a thoroughly foul mood.
On the very first evening, producer Vibeke Windeløv organised a get-acquainted dinner and called Lars to invite him. «He sat down at our table, was terribly grumpy, and talked about only one thing — namely, that I had called him while he was masturbating. And we were sitting there with two rather narrow-minded English girls. Ours was the only table where no one was laughing, because no matter what we tried to talk about, Lars would immediately start scolding me for calling while he was masturbating», the producer recalls.
Reception. The film was a colossal success and was considered essential viewing. At the premiere screening in Cannes, several people fainted from emotion and a doctor had to be called. Lars himself did not attend due to yet another panic attack, so when the Cannes auditorium erupted in applause, Vibeke Windeløv called him and shouted into the phone: «Listen, right now!». Bente was with her husband and remembers the moment: «We just sat there and listened to the applause, which went on for twenty minutes. I was crying, because it was so overwhelming. The audience kept clapping and clapping, without stopping».
Dogme 95
On 20 March 1995, a conference marking the centenary of cinema was held in Paris. Before an audience of gentlemen in tailcoats and ladies in evening gowns, Lars von Trier — dressed in jeans and a work shirt — read out the «Dogme» manifesto in halting English: a call to make genuine cinema. The manifesto urged filmmakers to abandon swelling budgets, unnecessary special effects and talentless stars in leading roles. Accompanying the manifesto was the «Vow of Chastity» — ten rules of filmmaking (a Russian translation can be found on Wikipedia).
Having finished his speech, Lars von Trier made a striking exit: he tossed the pages into the air, pulled on his jacket, and declared that since «Dogme» was a collective endeavour, he was not authorised to discuss it on his own behalf. With that, he left the gathering. He later recounted: «I made that up, of course, but it sounded very good. In show business it's always important to end with a bang and, if at all possible, to avoid the whole thing collapsing into some idiotic, pointless discussion».
Dogme came about by chance: originally, Lars had wanted to write a book about how to make films. But then, together with Thomas Vinterberg, he sketched out a rough set of rules and realised nothing more needed to be added. Trier then invited a couple more Danish directors to join the group: Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen.
At first, the film community did not take Dogme seriously. According to Trier, «most people thought it was a flash in the pan, that it would all fizzle out after the first few films». After the Paris conference, Lars wrote letters to many well-known directors, inviting them to join the movement: «I wrote to Bergman, Wim Wenders and Bertolucci. Everyone I could think of. Spielberg too. But no one took the bait».
Nevertheless, the movement went on to succeed: Dogme emerged at exactly the same time as small digital cameras. And while everyone else began shooting exclusively on those, the movement's members used older equipment, which set their films apart and drew attention to them. «Well, it all worked out — you couldn't make it up», laughs Trier.
The Idiots, 1998
Plot. In keeping with Dogme, Lars von Trier made the film The Idiots. A commune of well-educated young Danes amuses itself by pretending to be mentally disabled. The aim is to find their inner idiot.
One scene in the film involved people with Down's syndrome. Trier said that the moment they entered the garden, all the actors immediately forgot their characters' names and began behaving normally. «We brought them in so we could observe them and copy their behaviour. But it would have been absurd if the actors had started playing the mentally disabled in front of people who actually were», Lars explained.
Production. The director gave his actors almost no instructions, and his most frequent piece of advice was: "Stop acting." A documentary about the making of The Idiots was filmed, including excerpts from Trier's candid diary. In it, for instance, he described being in love with the actress Anne Louise Hassing.
Lars himself was disappointed by the shoot. He had wanted all the actors to live together as a commune, and so was disheartened when they went their separate ways each evening. "All those endless conversations about what we think and what we don't think. I wanted all their [the actors'] potential contribution to belong to me, and I didn't want them even trying to make decisions on their own. If I couldn't decide absolutely everything, then to hell with it. I thought fantastic things would happen during the shoot — and, for the most part, absolutely nothing did," he explains his dissatisfaction.
"Dogme." Lars von Trier was convinced that The Idiots complied with "Dogme". To that end, for example, the sex acts were real, including the group sex scene. However, the majority of the crew took the rules less than seriously and frequently operated on the principle of "anything goes, as long as Trier doesn't see it."
The truth came out after the premiere, when Lars discovered that behind his back producer Vibeke Windeløv and co-writer Peter Ølbeck had applied 172 colour-correction filters to individual shots, in violation of the "Vow of Chastity". Trier caused a scandal and even considered withdrawing the film.
In the end, Zentropa was forced to issue a formal apology to the Danish press. "I never forgave them [Vibeke Windeløv and Peter Ølbeck] for that."
Reception. Audiences responded warmly to the film. It was seen by 117,000 people in Danish cinemas. But most importantly: The Idiots proved that "Dogme" was no empty word.
Dancer in the Dark, 2000
Plot. Dancer in the Dark was the final film in the Golden Heart trilogy. Lars von Trier conceived it as a musical — but not a straightforward one: "I thought it would be interesting to try to make a musical that could actually make you feel something, because usually musicals don't engage the emotions at all — just nonsense. So I took the most pitiful synopsis I could possibly find and hit every key in it. A poverty-stricken, half-blind woman fighting to save her son's sight."
Technical approach. The director used technical devices to underline the film's musicality: ordinary scenes were shot with a single handheld camera in muted grey tones, while the songs were captured by a hundred locked-off cameras in vivid colour.
Production. The Icelandic singer Björk Guðmundsdóttir was invited to play the lead. Trier knew her through her music and felt that her charisma made her a perfect fit for the film.
The relationship between the director and the actress was fraught from the very start. As producer Vibeke Windeløv recalls, "she [Björk] is, of course, mad — and to the same degree as Lars, but where Lars is a manipulator, Björk turned out to be a dictator. Lars is, after all, accustomed to functioning within social structures and being part of a team. She was absolutely not disposed to that. And it wasn't just that she thought Lars was an idiot — no, she thought everyone was an idiot."
Björk went on strike against the schedule and refused to show up on set because she "wasn't in the mood today". Actors in full make-up were left sitting and waiting for her for hours at a time. After the third such incident Trier had had enough and took his revenge: he waited for a day when the singer finally did turn up for the shoot, whereupon she was informed that the director was not in the mood to work today.
Tensions continued to rise: scenes involving Björk had to be scheduled first, to ensure the film would not fall apart should the actress take another whim. On one occasion she infuriated Lars so thoroughly that he hurled a chair at a monitor, which promptly exploded. Even so, the director acknowledges that "as an actress she was phenomenally good — you can't take that away from her."
Reception. Dancer in the Dark was Lars von Trier's sixth film and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Björk left the festival with the Best Actress prize. After stepping off the stage to applause, she and Lars never spoke again. "The only thing I heard about her afterwards was that she had written a letter to Nicole Kidman urging her not to accept the role in Dogville. Because, as she wrote, 'I will destroy her,'" Trier recounted.
Films about America
The third group of films is called 'America — Land of Opportunity.' Lars von Trier opened it with Dogville (2003), followed it with the sequel Manderlay (2005), and the screenplay for a third film, Washington, in which characters from the first two parts were to appear, was never completed. Nevertheless, the director returned to American themes with The Boss of It All (2006).
Many received the trilogy as anti-American and accused Trier of harbouring hatred towards the United States. The director, however, says that "his relationship with America is, broadly speaking, a very mediated one, and that is precisely why it was interesting to make films set in the US."
Dogville, 2003
Plot. While on a fishing trip in Sweden, Trier hit upon an idea: what if the sets for a film were drawn in chalk? The plot followed just as quickly, inspired by a Danish folk song about a robber's daughter who works diligently in a town until a pirate ship moors at the harbour. "And then they [the pirates] ask her: 'Who should die?' And she answers: 'Every last one of them.' So my idea was to write the story that preceded that song," Trier explains.
In the end the pirates were dropped, replaced by gangsters. The result was the story of a warm-hearted young woman named Grace, who is forced to hide from criminals in the small town of Dogville. At first the townspeople agree to shelter her, but gradually they begin to exploit her, justifying their behaviour with appeals to fairness.
Production. Nicole Kidman was invited to play Grace. At first the director and the actress were finding their footing with each other, and there was no shortage of arguments. Rumour had it that Lars once showed up at Nicole's door naked, just to see how she would react. The actress recalled that the first week of shooting was difficult, because both she and Trier had formed preconceptions about each other in advance — but then "it all ended with us going deep into the forest and talking everything through. We screamed at each other for about three hours, but when we came back we were firmly bound to each other and to the project."
According to Trier, Nicole proved a true gift and was unreservedly committed to the film: "She would say, 'No, let's try it again.' And for me that was great, of course, because afterwards I could choose from a whole pile of different takes. She trusted me and left all the responsibility with me."
Reception. Dogville did not win a prize at Cannes, something that surprised Trier: "I think the film deserved at least some kind of award. And Nicole should have received something too." All the same, Dogville found favour with audiences and critics alike. Today it features on every essential Lars von Trier viewing list.
Crisis: Manderlay, 2005 and The Boss of It All, 2006
In 2005 Manderlay premiered — the second instalment in the chalk-set American trilogy. In it, Grace arrives at a plantation in Alabama where, by a strange twist of fate, slavery has survived intact. Nicole Kidman was unable to appear in the film, and so her character was played by Bryce Dallas Howard. Although at the Cannes screening Lars called George Bush a "shithead," Manderlay itself passed almost unnoticed.
Things went particularly badly in 2006, when Trier presented the film The Boss of It All: the head of an IT company had once invented a fictional CEO and now finds himself forced to hire an actor to play the role, because he wants to sell his business. The film attracted only a small audience, and the writer Carsten Jensen gave it a devastating one-star review. He wrote: 'The Boss of It All resembles a video produced for Zentropa's office Christmas party, shot by a couple of ordinary employees who borrowed a camera between takes and improvised a gentle satire of those in power at their own workplace.' Rumour has it that Lars carried this article in his pocket for a long time, sinking ever deeper into depression.
In 2007, the fifty-year-old Trier declared that he doubted he would ever make another film. At that point he was in the most severe phase of a depression that had persisted for several years. He described his state of mind as follows: 'In general, I felt that life was over. That from now on everything would only decline.'
Lars even agreed to be admitted to a psychiatric ward. But his phobia of doctors proved stronger, and the director fled home the very next day. He began seeing a psychologist and drew up a personal schedule so as 'not to spend days lying around howling at the wall.' It worked — Trier resumed work on the screenplay for Antichrist.
The Depression Trilogy
The Depression Trilogy comprises Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011) and Nymphomaniac (2013). The trilogy's name refers not only to the director's illness but also to the leitmotif running through the films: how can a person respond to depression?
Antichrist, 2009
Plot. One of Lars von Trier's most controversial films, Antichrist, was released in 2009. The story revolves around the masculine and feminine principles, explores erotic themes and raises religious questions: a couple retreats to a forest after their child dies while they are having sex. The husband, a psychotherapist, attempts to help his wife cope with the loss, but their relationship grows increasingly volatile.
Concept. Lars von Trier conceived Antichrist while watching a nature documentary. It argued that the places we perceive as most beautiful are often the arena of brutal struggle between species. 'Perhaps beauty is struggle. That was precisely what interested me: if this is beauty and God created it, then what God created is evil,' the director explained.
Accusations of misogyny. Since the demonic force of nature in the film is embodied by a female figure, many accused Lars von Trier of misogyny. When asked how he ultimately wanted to portray woman in Antichrist, he replied: 'There is something of the witch in woman. These are all small strokes of a portrait. There is no doubt that women interest me greatly, because of their exoticism — men I know at least somewhat from the inside.'
To accusations of depicting women one-dimensionally in his films, he counters: 'If you take all the films I have made and look at the female roles, you can see that they are, damn it, very different from one another. I don't think I portray women in a one-sided way — no. If anything, it's the men who come out one-sided in my work, if we're being honest.'
Cast. The lead female role in Antichrist was played by the Anglo-French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg. Lars subsequently cast her in Melancholia and Nymphomaniac, despite never previously having worked with the same actress more than once. Charlotte Gainsbourg describes the director as follows: 'My father was in some ways similar to Trier — the sense of humour, total unpredictability, and so on. In certain scenes I went further than I could ever have imagined, purely in order to please him — just as I once wanted to please my father.'
Filming. The shoot was gruelling — Lars was battling depression. But the weekends were far worse, when he had no idea how to fill the time. This is how the director describes working on Antichrist: 'the shoot itself is so structured that I somehow managed to hold it together. I kept going, not least because of the thought that if I couldn't make a film, then what could I do at all?' Even so, Trier later admitted that Antichrist might have turned out even better had he not been unwell.
Reception. Antichrist left no one indifferent: reviews were either glowing or devastating. Here are a few newspaper headlines and quotes about the film: 'The film that comes closest to a scream' (The Hollywood Reporter), 'How far can you go before a film is banned?' (Daily Mail), 'A work of genius or the sickest film in cinema history?' (The Guardian).
Yet while the global public largely failed to understand the film, the Danes praised it warmly. Antichrist won the Bodil Award — the Danish equivalent of the Oscar — and Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe were named best performers. Danish film critic Kim Skotte explained it this way: 'Rumours kept surfacing about how ill Lars von Trier was feeling. So it was almost a relief to learn that he was still capable of making a film with such tremendous force.'
Melancholia, 2011
Plot. Melancholia had its premiere in 2011. Lars von Trier conceived the idea for the film while undergoing therapy: he wanted to explore the psychology of people in the grip of depression as they face an impending apocalypse. A mysterious planet named Melancholia is closing in on Earth, destined to destroy all life. On the eve of the catastrophe, a young woman, Justine (Kirsten Dunst), gets married, while her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) sinks into clinical depression.
Cast. In the original conception, the role of Justine was to be played by Penélope Cruz — Lars von Trier wrote the screenplay with her in mind and wanted to portray a Spanish wedding. But the actress had to decline. In Trier's words, 'she was mad about the script, but then Pirates of the Caribbean came along and she could earn a billion on that.' For the vacancy, Lars approached the Russian Bond girl Olga Kurylenko. But screen tests revealed that she was 'not melancholic enough.' In the end, American actress Kirsten Dunst was cast.
Technical aspects. Reflecting on the result, Lars von Trier admits with some regret that he made such a flawless film, yet hopes that certain imperfections might still be found to make it interesting. Many critics agreed with the director, noting the perfection and compositional precision of every frame — each one like a painting.
The Cannes scandal. At the Cannes press conference, responding to a journalist's question about the German motifs in the film, Lars von Trier said: 'For a long time I thought I was a Jew and was happy about that… Then it turned out I was not Jewish… I found that I was a real German/Nazi, which also gave me some pleasure. What can I say? I understand Hitler. Of course he did wrong things, but I can imagine him sitting in his bunker at the end… I sympathise with him, yes, a little. But of course I am not for the Second World War and I am not against Jews. I am very much for them; well, maybe not so much, because Israel is a pain in the arse. But nevertheless, how do I get out of this… OK, I'm a Nazi.'
The scandal that followed was very real. Lars von Trier was obliged to issue an official apology and explain his ill-judged joke. Festival management banned the director from taking part in the Cannes Film Festival, but he checked into a nearby hotel and continued giving promotional interviews to journalists.
Reception. Despite the incident at the press conference, audiences and critics alike praised Melancholia. Kirsten Dunst won the Best Actress prize, and the film featured in several major international rankings.
Nymphomaniac, 2013
Plot. The closing chapter of the Depression Trilogy is Nymphomaniac (2013) — a two-part, four-hour film containing explicit erotic scenes. An aging bachelor named Seligman listens to the story of Joe, a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac, as she recounts her sexual life from the age of two to fifty. The film's tagline is 'Forget About Love.' Throughout the picture, the director methodically demonstrates that love destroys pleasure.
Characters. Both the male and female leads were played by actors who had previously worked with Lars von Trier: Stellan Skarsgård (from Breaking the Waves) and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Describing the shoot, the actress said she was 'a little troubled, embarrassed and humiliated.' Even so, she added that she found pleasure in overcoming her natural shyness and trying herself in an unusually bold role.
Filming. The film contains many explicit scenes, including group sex, violence and sadomasochism. The sex is unsimulated — all scenes were shot for real. The actors' faces were digitally composited onto the bodies of pornographic stand-ins.
Two versions. The director's original cut runs five and a half hours. For theatrical release, however, it had to be trimmed to four hours and divided into two parts. Lars von Trier stated that this was done for commercial reasons, and that all the bedroom scenes were retained. Rumour has it that the director did not know exactly which sections had been cut from the longer version for distribution.
Reception. The film was warmly received by audiences, and some reviews even described it as Lars von Trier's opus magnum. In 2014, Nymphomaniac appeared in the Top 10 best films of the year according to the influential French journal Les Cahiers du cinéma.
The House That Jack Built, 2018
Plot. After a five-year hiatus, Lars von Trier presented The House That Jack Built. The horror film did not mark the beginning of a new trilogy; it stands apart in Trier's body of work. The picture traces the twelve-year history of Jack, a serial killer who approaches each of his murders as a work of art — five sometimes absurdly comic 'incidents' are depicted in the film. In one interview, Lars stated that 'if I hadn't chosen film school and a directing career at the time, I might well have become Jack.'
Filming. Trier originally planned to make a series, but changed his mind and opted for a single feature film. In preparation, he studied the biographies of several serial killers in depth. The result is a film containing many brutal scenes. American actor Matt Dillon was cast in the lead role. In an interview with The Guardian, Trier noted that the film was inspired by Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election: 'The film celebrates the idea that life is a cruel and heartless thing. This is borne out by the recent rise of homo trumpus, the Rat King.'
Cannes. Following his remarks about Hitler, Lars von Trier was declared persona non grata at the Cannes Film Festival. Nevertheless, The House That Jack Built was screened out of competition. Around a hundred viewers walked out of the premiere, and film critic Ramin Setoodeh said that 'watching the film was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life.' Lars von Trier, however, felt he could have gone even further: 'I'm not sure The House That Jack Built angers people enough.'
Reception. The film attracted considerable attention and a great deal of negative criticism for its scenes of violence. Average ratings have not risen above 6 out of 10.
Future plans: Études
As Lars von Trier has admitted, making The House That Jack Built exhausted him enormously, and he began drinking again: 'No one is to blame for that but me. I filled myself with anxiety and alcohol. That's why I can no longer make feature films — at least not for now.'
The director is currently working on a project called Études: ten black-and-white short films featuring Scandinavian actors.
Interview with Lars with Russian subtitles
Interesting facts
- Long before enrolling at the Danish Film School, Lars von Trier had written several novels and even submitted them to publishers — only to receive polite rejections from every one of them.
- Before the film The Orchid Gardener begins, a dedication appears on screen: 'For Anna. Who died of leukaemia immediately after the end of shooting. 30.04.1956 — 29.10.1977.' The first date is Lars von Trier's birthday. The second is the day filming wrapped. As the director himself explains: 'There was no Anna. I simply decided that a dedication like that would make people take the film seriously.'
- Lars von Trier has a deep admiration for the films of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. He has admitted to watching Mirror around ten times.
- Actor Stellan Skarsgård, who played the lead in Breaking the Waves, once told the following story: 'I read the script and it was magnificent. So I went to see Lars. Helena Bonham Carter was also there [she ultimately did not appear in the film]. I told her that a role like this comes along once in a lifetime, and she would be an idiot to pass it up. A year later we ran into each other, and she stood up and said: "I know, I know, I know!"'
- Lars von Trier is fascinated by a North Korean torture technique in which a person is placed inside a special capsule filled with saline solution in order to deprive them of all sensory perception. It generally drives people to madness. The director had one installed at his studio complex so that he could lie inside it and develop ideas for films.
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