Europa

Von Trier once explained how he created such strong involvement from the viewer with his movies by placing his movie world in about the middle of the real world and the imagined world. So as viewers we think we watch a "true" story while in fact we are thoroughly manipulated, often to the point that the movie works disturbing (Dancer in the Dark) or painful (The Idiots/ Idioterne). Of course the Dogme-films acted only as a vehicle for this theory (besides creating some welcome spotlight on Von Trier).

The story is typical for Von Trier: our hero is idealistic, seems to balance his relations with everybody else, but soon becomes the victim of the problems others have created in the past for themselves. The idealist inevitably has to reject society in order to stay idealistic and becomes the terrorist. Mankind is spoiled and purity only leads to (self-)destruction. (These elements were also very omnipresent in Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark.) The movie is also full of cynical (even humorous) undertones about the role of the Germans and Americans in post-war Germany.

As a technical achievement the movie is wonderfully designed: shifting and fading washed-out colors, screen overlays, action on different overlays (with the shooting of the soon-to-be mayor as the most interesting). In this movie we can see how good Von Trier's handles film as a technical medium. In his later works he seems to step down from this (as if he is not longer interested in technical achievements because they become so easily available).

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.

Zentropa has much in common with The Third Man, another noir-like film set among the rubble of postwar Europe. Like TTM, there is much inventive camera work. There is an innocent American who gets emotionally involved with a woman he doesn't really understand, and whose naivety is all the more striking in contrast with the natives.

But I'd have to say that The Third Man has a more well-crafted storyline. Zentropa is a bit disjointed in this respect. Perhaps this is intentional: it is presented as a dream/nightmare, and making it too coherent would spoil the effect.

This movie is unrelentingly grim--"noir" in more than one sense; one never sees the sun shine. Grim, but intriguing, and frightening.

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