Lars von Trier (né Lars Trier; born 30 April 1956) is a Danish film director and screenwriter.
Beginning in the late-1960s as a child actor working on Danish television series Secret Summer, Trier's career has spanned more than five decades. Considered a major figure of the European film industry, he and his works have been variously described as ambitious and provocative, as well as technically innovative. His films offer confrontational examinations of existential, social, psychosexual, and political issues, and deal in subjects including mercy, sacrifice, and mental health. He frequently collaborates with the actors Jens Albinus, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier and Stellan Skarsgård.
Trier co-created the filmmaking movement Dogme 95 alongside fellow director Thomas Vinterberg and co-founded the Danish film production company Zentropa, the films from which have sold more than 350million tickets and garnered eight Academy Award nominations.
Trier has been the subject of criticisms and controversies. Cannes Film Festival, in addition to awarding his films on numerous occasions, once listed him as for making a Nazism joke during an interview. Animal harm on Manderlays set, and graphic violence and unsimulated sex in some of his films have drawn criticism, and he has also been accused of mistreatment and negligence towards actresses during the filming process, including Björk.
Early life and education Born Lars Trier in Kongens Lyngby, Denmark, north of Copenhagen, his parents are Inger Høst and Ulf Trier. He later learned from Inger's deathbed that his biological father was , Inger's former boss at Denmark's Ministry of Social Affairs and a World War II resistance fighter.
He studied film theory at the University of Copenhagen and film direction at the National Film School of Denmark. At 25, he won two Best School Film awards at the Munich International Festival of Film Schools for Nocturne and Last Detail. The same year, he added the nobiliary particle "von" to his name, possibly as a satirical homage to the equally self-invented titles of directors Erich von Stroheim and Josef von Sternberg, and saw his graduation film Images of Liberation released as a theatrical feature.
Career 1984–1994: Career beginnings and Europa trilogy In 1984, The Element of Crime, Trier's breakthrough film, received twelve awards at seven international festivals including the Technical Grand Prize at Cannes, and a nomination for the Palme d'Or. The film's slow, non-linear pace, innovative and multi-leveled plot design, and dark dreamlike visual effects combine to create an allegory for traumatic European historical events.
Trier's next film, Epidemic (1987), was also shown at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section, and featured two story lines that ultimately collide: the chronicle of two filmmakers (played by Trier and screenwriter Niels Vørse) in the midst of developing a new project, and a dark science fiction tale of a future plaguethe very film Trier and Vørsel are depicted making. He next directed Medea (1988) for television, based on a screenplay by Carl Th. Dreyer and starring Udo Kier, which won the Jean d'Arcy prize in France.
Trier has referred to his films as falling into thematic and stylistic trilogies. This pattern began with The Element of Crime (1984), the first of the Europa trilogy, which illuminated traumatic periods in Europe both in the past and the future. It also includes Epidemic. He completed the trilogy in 1991 with Europa (released as Zentropa in the US), which won the Prix duJury at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, and picked up awards at other major festivals. In 1990 he also directed the music video for the song "Bakerman" by Laid Back. This video was re-used in 2006 by the English DJ and artist Shaun Baker in his remake of the song.
Seeking financial independence and creative control over their projects, in 1992 Trier and producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen founded the film production company Zentropa Entertainment, which has sold more than 350 million tickets and was nominated for multiple Academy Awards as of 2016. Named after a fictional railway company in Europa, their most recent film at the time, Zentropa has produced many movies other than Trier's own, as well as several television series. It has also produced hardcore sex films: Constance (1998), Pink Prison (1999), HotMen CoolBoyz (2000), and All About Anna (2005). To make money for his newly founded company, Trier made The Kingdom (Danish title Riget, 1994) and The KingdomII (RigetII, 1997), a pair of miniseries recorded in the Danish national hospital, the name "Riget" being a colloquial name for the hospital known as Rigshospitalet (lit. The Kingdom's Hospital) in Danish. A projected third season of the series was derailed by the death in 1998 of Ernst-Hugo Järegård, who played Dr. Helmer, and that of Kirsten Rolffes, who played Mrs. Drusse, in 2000, two of the major characters, which led to the series' cancellation.
1995–2000: Dogme 95 manifesto, and Golden Heart trilogy
In 1995, Trier and Thomas Vinterberg presented their manifesto for a new cinematic movement, which they called Dogme 95. The Dogme95 concept, which led to international interest in Danish film, inspired filmmakers all over the world. It required filmmakers to shirk several common techniques in modern filmmaking, such as studio lighting, sets, costumes, and non-diegetic music. In 2008, together with their fellow Dogme directors Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, Trier and Thomas Vinterberg received the European film award for European Achievement in World Cinema.
In 1996 Trier conducted an unusual theatrical experiment in Copenhagen involving 53 actors, which he titled Psychomobile1: The World Clock. A documentary chronicling the project was directed by Jesper Jargil, and was released in 2000 with the title De Udstillede (The Exhibited).
Trier achieved international success with his Golden Heart trilogy. Each film in the trilogy is about naive heroines who maintain their "golden hearts" despite the tragedies they experience. This trilogy consists of Breaking the Waves (1996), The Idiots (1998), and Dancer in the Dark (2000).Unconventional Trilogies , dated June 2013, at andsoitbeginsfilms.com While all three films are sometimes associated with the Dogme 95 movement, The Idiots was the only one to meet all the necessary criteria to be "certified" as such.
Breaking the Waves won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and featured Emily Watson, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Its grainy images, and hand-held photography, pointed towards Dogme95 but violated several of the manifesto's rules. The second film in the trilogy, The Idiots, was nominated for a Palme d'Or, with which he was presented in person at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, despite his dislike of traveling. In 2000, Trier premiered Dancer in the Dark, a musical featuring Icelandic musician Björk, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. The song "I've Seen It All" (co-written by Trier) received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song.
2003–2008: USA: Land of Opportunities trilogy and other works
The Five Obstructions (2003), made by Trier and Jørgen Leth, is a documentary that incorporates lengthy sections of experimental films. The premise is that Trier challenges Leth, his friend and mentor, to remake his 1967 experimental short The Perfect Human five times, each time with a different obstacle.
His next proposed trilogy, USA: Land of Opportunities, consists of Dogville (2003), Manderlay (2005), and the unmade Washington. The first two installments were shot with the same distinctive, extremely stylized approach, with the actors performing on a bare sound stage with no decoration, buildings' walls marked by chalk lines on the floor, a style inspired by 1970s televised theatre. Dogville starred Nicole Kidman as Grace Margaret Mulligan, a role taken by Bryce Dallas Howard for Manderlay. Both films feature an ensemble cast including Harriet Andersson, Lauren Bacall, James Caan, Danny Glover, and Willem Dafoe. The films question various issues relating to American society, such as intolerance and slavery.
A donkey was slaughtered for dramatic purposes during production of Manderlay, an act that caused actors including John C. Reilly to quit the film in protest at its cruelty to animals. The scene was cut from the film before it was released.
In 2006, Trier released the Danish-language comedy film, The Boss of It All, which was shot using an experimental process he named Automavision, involving the director choosing the best possible fixed camera position, then allowing a computer to randomly choose when to tilt, pan, or zoom. He followed this with a semi-autobiographical film, The Early Years: Erik Nietzsche Part 1 in 2007, which Trier wrote and directed. The film tells the story of Trier's years as a student at the National Film School of Denmark. It stars Jonatan Spang as Trier's alter ego Erik Nietzsche and is narrated by Trier himself, with all main characters being based on real people from the Danish film industry. The thinly veiled portrayals include Jens Albinus as director Nils Malmros, Dejan Čukić as screenwriter Mogens Rukov, and Søren Pilmark.
2009–2014: Depression trilogy The Depression trilogy consists of Antichrist, Melancholia, and Nymphomaniac. The three films star Charlotte Gainsbourg, and deal with characters who suffer depression or grief in different ways. This trilogy is said to represent the depression that Trier himself experiences.
Antichrist follows "a grieving couple who retreat to their cabin in the woods, hoping a return to Eden will repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage; but nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse". The film stars Willem Dafoe and Gainsbourg. It premiered in competition at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where the festival's jury honoured the movie by giving the Best Actress award to Gainsbourg.
Melancholia, released in 2011, is an apocalyptic drama about two depressive sisters played by Kirsten Dunst and Gainsbourg, the former of whom marries just before a rogue planet is about to collide with Earth. The film was in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Best Actress award for Dunst.
In May 2011, known to be provocative in interviews, Trier's remarks during the press conference before the premiere of Melancholia in Cannes caused significant controversy in the media, leading the festival to declare him persona non grata. He was therefore banned from Cannes for one year, although Melancholia still competed in that year's competition.
Minutes before the end of the press conference, Trier was asked about his German roots and the Nazi aesthetic, in response to his description of the film's genre as "German romance". He joked that since he was "no longer Jewish," having been told the truth about his biological father, he now "understands" and "sympathizes" with Hitler, that he is not against the Jews except for Israel which is "a pain in the ass" and that he is a Nazi. Trier was branded an antisemite for his remarks. He released a formal apology immediately after the press conference and kept apologizing for his joke during all of the interviews he gave in the weeks following the incident, admitting that he was not sober, and saying that he did not need to explain that he is not a Nazi. However, in 2019, Trier stated that he made this remark at the "only press conference I ever had when I was sober.""Lars Von Trier Wants to Turn All His Movies Into Diamonds," New York Times, 15 February 2019