Lars Von Trier
Epidemic

The thirteen interminable minutes chosen by Lars Von Trier to close the piece show the cries of a girl devastated and worn out by an epidemic not only physical but mental. She is a suffering silhouette who, amidst vomiting and tears, delivers the audience the most unsettling and "sick" close-up of the entire film. A young woman, never before appeared on screen, becomes the key witness to the murder of humanity; the latter can no longer hide behind trivialities, protect themselves from the rationality of their now indifferent and self-destructive human nature. The nightmare triumphs over the dream, and reality over imagination. The choice of black and white images, of a clear yet complex plot, the choice of young actors (the protagonist being Von Trier himself), the truth birthed between screams and blood. The sadistic yet "clean" psychological terror that would distinguish the director in the years to come begins to appear on the screen in a still childish yet effective manner; starting from the title, "Epidemic", something that bothers with its mere utterance.

Two directors, five days away from delivering their screenplay to the production entity, find themselves forced to reinvent it due to technical problems. After a conversation lasting only a few exchanges, the two protagonists decide to invent a new story. The subject of the new work would be a hypothetical epidemic of plague that would affect the entire planet Earth in the coming centuries. The human race is forced to live within fortified cities safe from the contagion. The doctors themselves, now resigned and disheartened, have decided to make the most of the last years of their lives; all except one, a young doctor determined to challenge the epidemic armed with aspirin and goodwill. Once he arrives in the contaminated territories, the doctor meets a young black boy who... The young directors study with approximation and tranquility the meaning of their film, between long conversations and a trip to Germany. Could the epidemic not only be cinematic but also mental?

Certainly not the director’s best film, but a curious and youthful experiment with touches of irony and curious experimentation, bringing to film one of the topics that most shocked human history: the Bubonic Plague. The disease represented by the director is the same unhealthy desire to race towards a future (now present) that leads to madness, mental discomfort, and the physical need for situations and things that can only harm; at the end of the work, we remain immobilized in front of the violence exhibited by the director, despite the fact that it has hardly appeared. The film resolves in the last twenty minutes. An author like this one can only continue to be loved... Or Hated?!