Europa

Zentropa is another von Trier film that manages to tell an authentically interesting story, revel in its own aesthetic beauty, and engage us in questions of metaphysics. The films narration, as described above, sets the gauntlet very high. The often tired flashback/hypnotism/relapse/etc structure poses a certain disaster to most of the films that dare to use it. However, it is pulled off masterfully.

With Zentropa, we must first buy into the introduction. We prepare ourselves to relive these moments, and allow the film to justify its use of this down the tracks. However, we learn very quickly that what we have been sold is not the standard omniscient perspective. It is distorted and fragmented; emotion has been poured on too thick at parts, while in others it is spread too thin. We must accept the story directly from a mind that we considerably mistrust.

The rest of the film tirelessly reconstructs the scenes of this deranged mind. We transition from b&w film, to color. From a nearly mystical hope, to an absurd pessimism. Time moves too slowly, but abruptly jumps ahead too quickly. von Trier understands the architecture of this 'hypnotic' state supremely.

The movie progresses sporadically which is mandatory given the structure. von Trier plays wonderfully with the noir genre, he throws in some espionage, some sex, love, hats and guns. Finally, he skillfully introduces issues of morality, war, and responsibility- adding a rich political dimension to an already layered film.

The final scenes are visually the most beautiful in the movie, and some of my all time personal favorites. The quiet, tenseless moments in this sequence finally allow us to sink into a comfortable pace and an agreeable aesthetic.

Ultimately, von Trier has framed this film around a giant question of reality. As is his standard. The fact that this metaphysical dimension continually impinges upon the film, justifies its validity. The question was artfully asked. And beneath this works a noir film, a veritable feast of imagery, and wonderful performances.

Storyline: Max von Sydow's voice-over narration hypnotizes the protagonist (and audience) back to 1945 where our protagonist the young American ideologist Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr) has just arrived in post-WWII 1945 Germany to help rebuilding the damaged country. Uncle Kessler (Ernst-Hugo Järegård) supplies Leopold with a job in the big Zentropa train corporation, but soon Leopold falls in love with Katharina Hartmann (Barbara Sukowa); daughter of Zentropa owner Max Hartmann (Jørgen Reenberg). Leopold soon finds himself caught in a web of corruption, being taken advantage of, losing his ideology, and is forced to chose between pest or colera.

Mysterious, mesmerizing, manipulative, noirish, haunting, beautiful, and ugly. These are some immediate, grandiose, descriptions that come to mind when thinking of Lars von Trier's 1991 masterpiece EUROPA; the final chapter of the Europa trilogy. In USA it was retitled ZENTROPA so audiences wouldn't confuse it with Agnieszka Holland's EUROPA EUROPA from 1990 (equally a WWII drama). The Europa trilogy also consists of FORBRYDELSENS ELEMENT from 1984 and EPIDEMIC from 1987 (the infamous experiment that only sold 900 tickets in the Danish cinemas). The trilogy thematically deals with hypnotism and loss of idealism, although the themes of this trilogy are not as essential as the visuals. In the opening-shot of EUROPA we see a locomotive moving towards us while our unidentified narrator literally hypnotizes us: "On the mental count of ten, you will be in Europa. Be there at ten. I say: ten". A metaphor for movies' ability to transport us into a subconscious dream-reality.

EUROPA utilizes a strange but extremely effective visual style -- that famous Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky is Trier's main-influence says it all. It's a black-and-white movie occasionally intertwined with red in form of blood, a red dress etc. According to rumors this inspired Steven Spielberg to use the similar effect in SHINDLER'S LIST from 1993 (coincidentially another WWII drama). Furthermore Trier uses so-called Dutch angels and reinvents background-projection by adding separately shot co-operating layers upon layers, but unlike old Hollywood movies that incorporated it for economical reasons, Trier uses it for artistic reasons. These carefully executed strange-looking visual techniques underline that we are in a dream-reality, we are hypnotized; the universe of EUROPA is not real! EUROPA is often criticized for weighing advanced technique (such as multi-layered background-projection) above plot and characters, but hey that's what reviewers criticized Stanley Kubrick's 1968 visual masterpiece 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY for -- nowadays it holds an obligatory place in all cinema-history books.

EUROPA also gets accused of historical incorrectness. Apparently Trier assigns the Nazis' Werewolf terrorist-group too much historical significance. According to various online-sources that's correct (a fascinating subject - try Googl'ing it yourself!), yet Trier's purposes are neither educational nor portraying history accurately. EUROPA is a never-ending nightmare. Leopold Kessler is hypnotized, therefore the universe that the audience encounters is a distorted reality. Equally it shows how our memory deceives us -- a 100% accurate reconstruction is a lie! Although young audiences who experience EUROPA are too young to have memories from WWII, we have a collective memory of it from various BBC documentaries, so these small inaccuracies actually serve a purpose: they inform us us that we are not in post-WWII Germany 1945, but in Leopolds memory of it.

All three Europa trilogy chapters portray young ideologists with noble intentions forced into corruption and losing their ideological innocence. The ambiguous endings of FORBRYDELSENS ELEMENT and EUROPA show the ideologists getting forever caught in their hypnotized realities. Before, during and after shooting EUROPA in 1990 in Poland, Lars von Trier and co-writer Niels Vørsel were extremely interested in WWII. It shows. It's packed with extremely beautiful shots catching the atmosphere of the time-period spot-on. A great example is the old Polish church (EUROPA was shot in Poland primarily for economic reasons) in the last act of EUROPA. As with 2001: SPACE ODYSSEY I think EUROPA will receive it's rightfully deserved place in cinema-history. Its method of twisting old film-noir love-affair clichés and visual techniques is so unique, strange and completely different from anything you will see from Hollywood nowadays, or any other dream-factory for that matter.

EUROPA is an essential movie in the Lars von Trier catalog. Some write it off as pure commercial speculation, but that would be catastrophic. It's right up there with other Trier classics and semi-classics such as FORBRYDELSENS ELEMENT from 1984, the TV-series RIGET from 1993 and DOGVILLE from 2003. It's a unique experience from before Trier cared for his actors, and before the Dogme95 Manifesto. Watch it! "On the count of ten..." 9/10

Someone release this movie on DVD so it can take its hallowed place as one of the greatest films of all time in ten to twenty years when critics and film historians look back on the so-called films of the 1990's and see how vapid they were for the most part, and how Lars Von Trier tried to revolutionize and revitalize the international film world with this masterpiece. As it stands, "Zentropa" (or "Europa" as it is referred to outside the US) is one of the most fascinating and artistic views of the bleakness and almost psychotic uncertainty that oozed out of post WWII Europe, namely the decimated German landscape, whose physical horrors were matched only by the damage to the psyche of its people. Von Trier brilliantly paints his vision on screen. You will feel like you are watching some lost espionage noir classic from the late 1940's with the perfectly lighted black and white scenes, while at the same time feel you are on the brink of something beyond the cutting edge, especially in scenes like the assassination aboard the train. Literally, when you see this movie, you are witnessing the evolution of an art form.

For some reason, Von Trier got caught up in his own Dogma movement shortly after this. And while his "Breaking the Waves" and "Dancer in the Dark" are classics in their own right, it is with "Zentropa" that he truly lifted the art of film making to new and exciting heights. 10/10, ages like a fine wine, and begs for a DVD release.

***Postscript - Criterion released the film on DVD in 2009. Highly recommended.

By watching this movie I discovered an artist that I waited too long to discover. Playing with multiple cinematographic tricks Trier not only bring us back in history but he also adopt the style that movie had in the time where the action is depicted. Also, with the rear screen projection, Trier had the chance to give his movie a unique depth of field and by the way to mix color and B&W and therefore make a magical masterpiece that can be appreciated by the dumb movie eaters that most of us are.

Von Trier has created a film that is a noir satire, a joke on psychotherapy, the last great hurrah for back-projection in movies (even tops "The Nasty Girl" in that depatment), a historical hoax, a satire of the Prussian work ethic, a satire of noir romances, and an indirect indictment on the firms which profited off twelve years of Hiterite insanity. The train is Germany, with Ernst-Hugo Jaregard and Jean Marc-Bar decked out as its' SS and military (notice the tunic design, the collar patch piping, the peaked caps, the fact that it's all black.) The Werewolves are taken from Reichspropagandaminister Goerbbles' last hat trick, that the Reich gov't. was prepping an army of saboteurs in 1944-45 to make occupation a misery. The Zentropa firm is a combination of the steel kingpin Krupp (which used slave labor at Auschwitz), and Deutche Reichsbahn (the state railway firm which sent so many to their deaths), along with others like Ford, who profited from Axis and Allied war efforts. Hence the burial sequence is doubly ironic; the Nazi war profiteer getting last rites in a ruined cattle car that was probably resposible for the oblivion of hundreds. The film leaves you with the suspicion that Nazism was an extreme expression of the German national psychology of sado-masochism and that 46 years later Hitler's shadow still stalked Europa (the cathedral scene was shot in an actual Polish cathedral which had been left roofless by the Communist Polish gov't.) I will say no more, but I do love the "Europa Aria" over the final credits. That song says more then I possibly could.