Nymphomaniac: The Director's Cut

Description

The most controversial film of 2014 is finally released as it was meant to be appreciated with Lars Von Trier's full 5½ hour long director s cut. Passed completely uncut by the BBFC. Review: The Final Part of The Depression Trilogy - NYMPHOMANIAC - VOLS 1 & 2 DIRECTOR'S CUT - Directed by Lars Von Trier **Huge Erect Spoilers** NYMPHOMANIAC takes place inside the head of Lars Von Trier. Or any manic depressive. There is no escaping this fact. Both Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) are the dual aspects of a single personality. The tiny room in which these two damaged people talk to one another is filled with Seligman's intellectual and cultural reference points, as well as his past. Joe cannibalises what's there to spark her stories - none of which are true - to rebel, shock, titillate and antagonise the intellect. She is emotional chaos, abandon and sexuality. He is order, the rationale, culture and - being asexual - pure and virgin. The room is grim, dirty, with two windows - eyes being the windows of the soul - gazing out upon a brick wall where, after the long night, a glimpse of sunlight can be seen, but nobody knows where from. Seligman can't fathom it. Joe thinks it's beautiful. However, this being Von Trier - and with 'no happy endings', because there are no happy endings with mental illness, only coping mechanisms - Seligman and Joe play a game. It's the beyond of what they're both capable of achieving. Balance. NYMPHOMANIAC is about the struggle for balance, survival, and the lies we tell ourselves in order to continue. What's interesting about the film is the disappointment audiences feel at the punchline. They feel betrayed, because the relationship between Joe and Seligman seems so real. That these two lonely souls have, at last, both found respite and true friendship. Von Trier knows this to be bull. The idea that we must love ourselves in order to find true happiness, that we - and only we - can save ourselves, is one of the biggest lies sold on the market. It's impossible for a permanently damaged person - even a species - to do such a thing. And that's what makes NYMPHOMANIAC such a bold and daring film. Seligman just doesn't listen to Joe at all in the film. He hears her stories, but then tries to fit them into a rational framework. She is bored of his methods from the word go. As the story continues, and as Joe steals from Seligman's - and Von Trier's - body of work (there is a direct and very amusing reference to both ANTI-CHRIST and MELANCHOLIA) Joe and Seligman subconsciously collude to bring about the climax of the final chapter, THE GUN. Seligman even telling Joe HOW to shoot it. Joe informing Seligman that the executed should be grateful to their killer. It's the corruption of the rational mind, armed only with useless facts, by manic depression and anxiety. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can stop the cycle. The apparent reprieve is a lie. Joe crosses a line - maybe it's even suicide? - and flees the scene in darkness. Seligman, the rational thought, is dead. And it's not attempted rape, as some observe (remember, it's - literally - a psychological drama). Seligman expects Joe to respond in kind, but he can't even get it up. Of course he can't. It's an area he can not control or master. Some see the film as a strong feminist tract. They are wrong. It has a strong female character, that's all, but she's gradually broken as the film continues. The ways of coping become more extreme, she is damaged, loses feeling, sacrifices her family, performs a self-abortion, has sympathy for Hitler (Von Trier mocking his infamous 2011 slip-up) and paedophiles. She's not a likeable character, which is the point - nobody with depression is - they become selfish and driven to destruction. Juliet in MELANCHOLIA literally summons the planet Melancholia and ends all life on earth. That's the (usually unspoken of) ego of the mentally ill. And if you think I'm wrong, consider the scene where Joe points out the mirror to Seligman. He looks over and - from his point of view - we see the reflected image of a camera shooting the film the audience is watching. However, it takes a person struggling with manic depression and OCD to understand and create a trilogy of films about the subject. NYMPHOMANIAC is a masterpiece. A film full of hard-core sex, transgression, dark humour (and some very crude, childish humour - spoons, is all I'm saying) and a no-holds-barred look at what it is to experience and struggle with depression in the most explicit way I've ever seen. Review: Heavy going but memorable. - This is a heavy-duty film. The beginning is so slow and dark I thought the DVD would have to be sent back as there appeared to be nothing recorded on it. It turns out that the dour start is mirrored by the tragic ending; between the two there are effectively two films in one. The first consists entirely of a conversation between two people, Joe and her rescuer, in a depressingly dull room. The second is a series of flashbacks as Joe recounts events in her life leading up to her current plight. The question is whether the overall effect is a serious study, pretentious nonsense or just downright disgusting. Probably it comprises all three, the proportions depending on your sensibility. In her mid-teens a close friend advises Joe to ask the “wh... questions” in order to engage in conversation. One such question for the director is “why did you make this film?”. The discs include interviews with some of the actors and a question and answer session. Normally these extras don’t interest me but in this case they do provide a worthwhile background to the film. Unfortunately the director himself does not appear, so we are left to guess at his motives. It might be claimed that this is an overdue exploration of female sexuality. All well and good, if so, but can that ever be done by a man? Isn’t any such attempt bound to be some kind of fantasy? In this case the point about Joe’s sexuality is that it is excessive: would many women identify with it as typical of themselves? She accuses herself of being a bad person because her obsession spoils other people’s lives, marriages and her own parenting. In a way her sexuality is incidental (how similar could the story have been if she was lesbian?) the main point is her obsession: it might almost as well have been about stamp-collecting. The conversation with Joe in the first of the two strands of the film is extremely wide ranging. From cutting finger nails to fly fishing, from helicopter dynamics to the components of Bach’s chords, they’re all there. Even Fibonacci numbers are applied to the number of sexual thrusts when Joe loses her virginity. This is where accusations of pretentiousness could be levelled. Some of the subjects are intended to provide analogies for events in Joe’s life but it becomes hard not to hit the fast-forward button. Another wh... question is “where is the film set?”. On a train, the ticket inspector wears a British uniform and sterling money is used but the train itself is clearly continental. In the street, the cars used are British and right-hand drive but the street itself and other settings do not appear to be in Britain. Maybe the mixing up was deliberate, to show that Joe’s story is a human one rather than related to any nationality, but I think a consistent setting would have given more integrity. The overall impression to me is one of almost unremitting gloom. There is beauty; there is even some love, between Joe and her father for instance, but what seems to be entirely lacking is humour. It came as a surprise therefore to hear the actors talk, in their interviews, about the humour of the writing and direction. I must have missed something. However, after slogging through both discs, the film leaves a lasting impression and raises all sorts of questions such as those above. Thus, if it can make the viewer think, not just ogle, at least it can claim to be art.