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Lars von Trier: Waiting For The End Of The World

LARS VON TRIER: WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD November 9 to 19, TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King West. tiff.net. See listings. Rating: NNNN


It seems weird that TIFF Cinematheque’s Lars von Trier series – titled Waiting For The End Of The World, and designed to lead into next week’s Lightbox engagement of Melancholia – leaves out key works like Epidemic, The Kingdom and Antichrist. Then again, there’s only so much you can ask an audience to take.

That said, the “select retrospective” offers the chance to catch up on some of von Trier’s earlier features made back when he was a chilly visual stylist rather than the grim, sour prankster he’s become.

After a screening earlier this week of his vérité 1996 masterpiece Breaking The Waves – still von Trier’s purest and most powerful film – the series rolls back to his younger, slicker days with The Element Of Crime (Friday, November 11, 6:30 pm) and Europa (Saturday, November 12, 8 pm November 17, 9:15 pm).

Structured as investigations into the soul of Europe, in which the pursuit of knowledge comes at a heavy price, they’re emotionally colder and visually cooler than his subsequent efforts – and two of the calmest, most poised thrillers you’ll ever see.

Things got much more ragged once von Trier and his pal Thomas Vinterberg hit on the Dogme 95 manifesto, a “vow of cinematic chastity” eschewing polished visuals, props and non-diegetic sound, among other things. Though von Trier only made one Dogme film – The Idiots, screening November 19 at 8 pm – its intentions can be felt in all of his subsequent work.

Both the messy musical Dancer In The Dark (November 18, 6 pm) and the austere Dogville (November 16, 6:30 pm) use documentary-like immediacy to chronicle the suffering of their female protagonists – Björk in the former, Nicole Kidman in the latter – as von Trier inexorably stacks the deck against them.

In fairness, that’s all he knows.

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