Nocturne

I saw this short film on a DVD containing short films by some of Europe's great directors including the likes Jean Luc Godard, Tom Tykwer, Peter Mullan etc. I have been big fan of Lars for a while now and seen most of his films so I was eager to see this and I wasn't disappointed. Right from the very start you can tell it is a Lars film due to the distinctive style. You can also see how it has influenced his later films e.g. The Element of Crime due to the use of filters. It is good to see how Lars has progressed from this early short and fans should check this short out although it is over too soon. It is a simple but effective short and fans should definitely like it, so check it out!!

A woman with a light sensitive condition sits in her dark room talking on the phone with an unseen man. They talk about the weather and her upcoming flight as we look around her darkened flat. And that's about it as far as I'm able to work out although, knowing Lars Von Trier, it's probably a very deep and meaningful piece about the human condition! But, if it was, then I'm afraid it was lost on me.

The film opens with a shot so still for over a minute that I actually checked to see I hadn't hit pause by mistake! It then moves around a lot and, to be honest, not a great deal happens. The characters speak but I couldn't hear anything other than murmuring and again I checked that my sound was working on my TV! So basically I assumed that me not getting this film was my fault – either for technical reasons or because I'm a bit thick! However I decided that it was more the fact that the film is not about substance – it is about Trier experimenting with filters, film and style in a way that he would return to again having learnt a lot from this film. To complain about its lack of plot is to really look at test spots of paint to check the colour and complain that they make the room look messy.

Of course this is no help if you have come in looking for a story and, if you have, then I suggest you just leave it because there is nothing even close to a narrative for you here! What there is is a film that is interesting to look at and Trier's direction is interesting if rough. He zooms in on images, he uses filters and he makes a weird use of the semi-dark that he seems to be shooting it. It may not back up a narrative but it is weirdly effective and would have been great with a short chiller story behind it (as the opening suggested it would be).

Overall not a great film in terms of narrative but in terms of visuals, the use of a camera and student experimentation it is interesting and worth a look if that aspect of it appeals to you – otherwise it is probably not good enough to appeal to a mass audience.

This is one of those film that take great patience to even sit through (short as it is). There are some interesting images and little that I could figure out. I suppose the main theme involves a confrontation with light. The rest is hard to speak positively about. k

Every so often, I find films that are designed for film snobs and I really take pleasure in saying how much I hate the film. While I love international films and even art films, I just can't stand the notion of incomprehensibly bad films being seen as artistic triumphs by people who judge the quality of a film by how confusing it is. If the average person says "it makes no sense", then you are sure that pseudo-intellectual snobs will adore it--perhaps because they think that this somehow makes them smarter than the other 99% who see the film and think it stinks. Such a film is NOCTURNE.

So why is NOCTURNE adored by the few? Well, first off, it was created by Lars Von Trier--a founder of the "Dogme 95" film movement. Dogme 95 is an avant-garde film movement that adheres to a long list of "musts" in order for a film to be "worthy". In many ways, the movement was like the French New Wave, but in Denmark in the 1980s. An obscure and elitist film movement--now THAT'S something film snobs love!! Second, NOCTURNE is filled with sloppy camera-work, confusing scenes and an unsatisfying conclusion--things that film snobs adore with a passion!

If this sound like your thing, then by all means watch. As for me, life's too short to watch unappealing and pretentious films like this.

By the way, this film is part of the CINEMA 16: European Shorts DVD. On this DVD are 16 shorts. Most aren't great, though because it contains THE MAN WITHOUT A HEAD, COPY SHOP, RABBIT and WASP, it's an amazing DVD for lovers of short films and well worth buying. Fortunately, NOCTURNE is the worst film in the set--it only gets better.