Fortunately, America-bashing is still very much in style at Cannes.  Absent Europe’s most popular spectator and participant sport, the belle gente would have little to do at the film fest but pick up trash off the rocky ‘beaches’ of the Côte d'Azur or watch the latest StarWars installment.

            Lars von Trier, for one, is tired of laboring under the thumb of the oppressive U.S. hegemony that makes life so difficult in Denmark these days.  “We are all under the influence—and it’s a very bad influence—from America,” said the 49-year-old Dane. “In my country everything has to do with America. America is kind of sitting on the world.  America has to do with 60 percent of my brain and all things I experience in my life, and I'm not happy about that,” von Trier said.  “I'd say 60 percent of my life is American so I am in fact an ‘American’ too. But I can’t go there and vote or change anything there. That is why I make films about America.” 

            Indeed, von Trier can’t go to the United States—and has never done so—because his fear of flying has prevents him from making the journey, according to the same Reuters report.  Aha.  Fear of flying.  According to IMDB, the year von Trier won the Palme D'Or at Cannes, he nearly skipped the ceremony.  Given his many phobias, he could only make the trip south in a specially outfitted trailer.  A specially outfitted trailer, huh?  Nice.

Well, he’s nothing if not rational.  But anyway, “he said he enjoyed bashing America on screen,” because of the unbearable U.S. influence that’s constantly dogging him.  To that end, he's apparently made another film that no one will see in the States.  Yawn…

            Surely the melancholy Dane will agree that turnabout is fair.  He hasn’t been to America, but enjoys “bashing” it, so an American who has never met von Trier should be entitled to bash him.  Metaphorically-speaking-wise, of course.  Not that it’s really worth the trouble, but still, he’s an interesting character.

            Von Trier was a founder of the Dogme95 film movement which produced all those Dogma films you heard about but didn’t see.  In typically European fashion, Dogma is all about rules.  Mainly about what you can’t do.  In order to achieve “honesty” or “reality,” you understand.  But here’s the catch:  because the film medium is inherently dishonest and false, none of the Dogma dogma makes a lick of sense.  “The camera never lies,” is simply wrong.  The camera, in fact, never tells the truth.  It can’t.  To pretend otherwise will make you a dour, depressed Scandinavian, and who has time for that?

            Among other things, Dogme95 refuses to allow a filmmaker to resort to tricks like artificial lighting or camera tripods.  A rule of this sort is equivalent to a cookbook admonishing, “the use of salt in any recipe is a dishonest trick.  In fact, cooking with any form of food is strictly forbidden.”  The party line (apparently translated from Danish via Babelfish.com) explains:  This implicates cutting out the usual aesthetic means of adding sound, light, make up, “mise en scene”. In addition, it gives more time to improvise the acting, because there are no breaks for hair, make up, light and costume change. Another point is that the handheld camera gives the actors more freedom and space to really impersonate and act out their characters, since the camera follows the actor instead of the opposite.

            Paradoxically, nothing is more artificial than available light and handheld camera.  Kubrick tried some of this filmic self-indulgence long ago in Barry Lyndon.  He shot an enormous banquet scene using only candlelight.  After all, that’s the light they’d really have had, right?  Well, yes.  And no.  If you’ve ever dined by candlelight, especially with scads of candles (think Stevie Nicks at bath time), you know that you can see perfectly well.  Everything looks normal, no flickering, no dark red glow, all right, a lot of shadows, but otherwise not very different than with a dim light bulb.

            The eye, the optic nerve, and the brain—you will be stunned to learn—are much more sophisticated than even the best digital video camera.  The brain performs white balancing with stunning accuracy.  It also sees into dimly lit shadows and evens out contrast.  Cameras don’t.  This is why a scene must be lit artificially in order to appear natural.  Light the same scene naturally, and it will appear artificial.  The same applies to hand-held camera techniques.  Ergo: Dogme95 films = First Semester UCLA Film School Homework.  But they’re cheap to make and this is always appealing to European filmmakers.

            Cheap is important because the films don’t make much money.  In the U.S., von Trier’s grosses are small, although larger than one might have expected.  Dancer in the Dark and Dogville pulled in $5 million or so at the box office collectively.  Internationally, however, the films’ combined gross of close to $40 million is not inconsiderable for movies that cost about 1/10 of that to make.  Which means that von Trier has made a few kroner of late.  Certainly enough to take the QEII across the Atlantic.  But why bother?  A U-boot might sink the ship halfway across.

            Apparently, Lars von Trier added the “von” to his name because his pals at the Danish Film School addressed him thusly.  Unclear if this was out of playful familiarity or scorn.  Adding “von,” which of course is German, and not Danish, is tantamount to preceding your name with “Sir” in English.  Or it is in German, anyway.  In Danish it’s like sticking “von” in the middle of your name.  “Sir Quentin Tarantino.  From now on, my name is Sir Quentin Tarantino.  Now go get me a decaf soy latte, you varlet.  And wax my big body Benz.”  Delusions of Teutonic grandeur?

            In the service of diversity of opinion, IMDB offers a secondary explanation for the “von” addition—an homage to director, Josef von Sternberg.  This is even nuttier.  Let’s find an analogue….hmmm…okay, here goes.  Alec Baldwin so admires the acting technique of Sir Laurence Olivier, he changes his name to “Sir Alec Baldwin.”  Jeez, Louise.

            Maybe Lars knew something was up with his parentage even then.  Apparently, on her deathbed, von Trier’s mom admitted that Mr. Trier the elder wasn’t Lars’s real dad.  It turns out that his mom’s boss, Fritz Michael Hartmann, "donated" the DNA.  Mrs. T. explained she had wanted a man with “artistic genes,” (and no doubt, a slow hand) and Hartmann, a member of an illustrious family of Danish composers including Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann and Niels Viggo Bentzon, seemed to fit the bill.  Again, according to IMDB, following his mom’s death, von Trier tracked down his biological father, by now a 90-year-old man, who after four combative meetings told the filmmaker that if he wanted to speak to him again, von Trier could do so through a lawyer.  Apparently Mr. Hartmann didn’t approve of hand-held camera either.

            Lars von Trier hates America because we’re robbing him of 60% of his brain.  Okay.  Fair enough.