Von Trier does for film what Hendrix did for the guitar. Most of us aren’t ready for him. I often find myself questioning my ability to appreciate his work. Not because it is beyond appreciation; rather, because I am limited to my preconceived ideas of what a film is and what it should be. The Element of Crime is a film I have attempted to watch at least half a dozen times. I am rarely in a state of mind worthy of viewing such a masterpiece. I label it offensive, pretentious, because it is too brilliant for me. To accept it for what it is; to watch it: creates this enormous contrast.
The Element of Crime is so vastly superior to the bulk of cinema that it renders the competition meaningless. It is a work of such mastery that it threatens my way of life. This, more or less, is why ignorant audiences prefer ignorant films; not because they fail to see the genius of masterworks, rather because they are threatened by expression far beyond their own capabilities. They are threatened by their inability to understand; by their self-imposed limitations. It is jealousy – and self-loathing – the dismissal of Von Trier.
In the Element of Crime, we witness the narrative as it unfolds through hypnosis: our protagonist, recalling events in a trance-like state; the story, narrated by both the hypnotist and the hypnotised. What results, is something like a mix between David Lynch’s Eraserhead and a Sherlock Holmes novel. It is an ideal environment for Von Trier, allowing him to forgo filmic conventions without justification. The film is a dream and, therefore, it is treated as such. His surreal approach to the subject matter, his extraordinary attention to detail: here, it does not need to be explained. The film is delivered through a psyche-filter. We see, and hear, what our protagonist’s memory allows. The minimalistic soundtrack; the selective editing choices: there is no point in debating them; they are fragments of recollection. There are even physical elements of the story that have been erased. At one point, Fischer (our protagonist) finds a file full of empty pages: the pages being empty because their content is irrelevant. He reads them, these empty pages, as he floats down a river that does not exist; he reads them, as he floats down a river in his mind.
I have never been a fan of superimposition. Even the crossfade bothers me: because, more often than not, it is used outside of aesthetic considerations. Editors and film-makers decide for thematic reasons to shift gradually from one scene to another. But the composition of individual frames during those transitions seemingly lack consideration. We see a slow fade, for example, from a beautiful sunrise to a picturesque landscape. But the images, they aren’t complimentary. If you pause it when it is half-sunrise and half-landscape, what you discover is a mess. In The Element of Crime superimposition, and even transitions, are used to great effect. We see windscreen wipers, flames, a drowned horse being hoisted from shimmering waters; all superimposed, all perfect.
Artificial use of light and shadow generally indicates the presence of an auteur; in The Element of Crime, it is part of Fischer’s psyche. Everything is used, every aspect of film-making, in order to advance the story; everything adds, nothing detracts. Von Trier’s decisions here are beyond question, in the sense that you cannot suggest that he is simply being pretentious or pandering to the art-house demographic. Those who dismiss Lars as being overtly artistic in his approach will struggle, in this case, to make such a statement. Dreams are permitted to be strange. We may restrict reality; we may restrict the conscious: but we do not restrict the subconscious. This applies to both life and art. Dreams are allowed to be mysterious; they are allowed to be indirect. Life, on the other hand, must be understood. Similarly in the context of a narrative, dream sequences are given certain concession that other scenes must do without. Von Trier doesn’t need the dream; we do: but, it makes him more accessible; it de-Triers Von Trier.
The narrative has a mind of its own. It drifts through this dream-state, only to be interrupted by the narrators – the hypnotized and the hypnotist – when it gets off course. We find ourselves meandering through the psychological landscape of our protagonist; discovering the mystery as he does. The story is multi-layered. It is told from two different perspectives simultaneously. We see Fischer, in flashback sequences, attempting to unravel the clues in real time; while the hypnotist fishes through Fischer’s mind, attempting to unravel the clues, after the fact. We see, through a magnifying glass, the clues themselves. And we see, through hypnosis, the clues as they are remembered. The film is dark, both literally and figuratively; spotlights illuminate psychic focal points among unlit and forgotten landscapes, while an impending sense of danger constantly threatens us. Yet it is flat; monotonous; dreamlike. I am reminded of Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch.
The difference between The Element of Crime and Naked Lunch, is: the former makes no attempt to satisfy; there are no humorous crowd pleasing moments between the bleak and horrific ones. The Element of Crime is one of Von Trier’s genre films. It is, as far as his filmography is concerned, a vehicle capable of transporting him towards the commercially viable. Directed by anybody else, the film might have appealed to a relatively-wide demographic. In Von Trier’s hands, it is a mind-bending head fuck; as all of his films are mind-bending head fucks. The subject matter is irrelevant, it seems; Lars can turn anything upside down. And he will continue to do so, genre be damned.
Here is a quote from Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley. ‘Professor Calvin Hall, who has collected records of many thousands of dreams, tells us that about two-thirds of all dreams are in black and white. 'Only one dream in three is coloured, or has some colour in it.' A few people dream entirely in colour; a few never experience colour in their dreams; the majority sometimes dream in colour, but more often do not.’ Consequently, The Element of Crime is shot in monochrome: not black and white; but sepia. There is black and then there is varying shades of brown and yellow and red; for really the mind does not differentiate between monochromes: one limited part of the spectrum is as good as another. The point is, that there is no definition. No unnecessary details. Other films have utilized the same technique, most famously Schindler’s List with the red dress. Though, I always found this a little tacky; a little obvious; a little patronizing. Von Trier uses colours, bright blues and greens, subtly: amongst his monochromes. Somehow you don’t see a startling visual symbol. In fact, I didn’t notice that the film was largely monochromatic until about the hour mark. It is so visually stunning, and so captivating and thought provoking, that colour is irrelevant; there is no time for the question to pop into your head of whether it is shot with or without.
Sound is approached in the same way as colour. We are only given the essentials. The mind does not remember anything else. It is selective, memory. And so is the film; we are given colours as they stand out, and sounds that strike a chord. Background details are discarded more and more as the film goes on. We observe Fischer, his descent into drugs and delirium, and we watch as objective fact becomes subjective distortion. Sound effects are excluded. Voices are dubbed, all of them; every piece of dialogue in the entire film is a lip-synched recording. The speech is hyper-real; his recollection of dialogue more fanciful than reality; his memories, also, more cinematic than the events that inspired them. What we see, in Von Trier’s Element of Crime, is a romantic reconstruction of a noir detective story; both an evolution of, and a departure from, the genre.
Typically, I take a snapshot of the film and post it with my reviews. This film, however, is so consistently beautiful that I can’t begin to decide what image best represents it. The cinematography, as a whole, speaks for itself.
6/5
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