Lars Von Trier
Idioti

«A film should be like a pebble in a shoe.»
L. Von Trier

Here is one of the most controversial films by the most discussed directors of recent years. Lars Von Trier, in this “The Idiots” from 1998, tries to tackle a delicate and questionable theme such as the illusion and desire to live Absolute Freedom, devoid of the rules and conventions of today's social life.

He does so in a politically incorrect, provocative and deliberately "dirty" manner, assembling a shaky story with the scent of utopian anarchy, closer to the spirit of a post-1968 libertarianism than to a true in-depth and objective investigation into the socio-cultural aspects and effects of such an "extreme" choice on the circumscribed community of protagonists.
The story itself is of little consequence: a sort of script that tells of a group of young people who, in a small town in Denmark, get together with the intention of pretending to be idiots, or rather, of acting entirely like genuinely mentally handicapped individuals, using this handicap to have fun and "freeload" dinners and favors at the expense of the surrounding community.

It is the story of the initiation into the group of the young Karen, shy and full of problems, who, although initially reluctant to the idea, will gradually become more and more involved in the situation.
She moves with the others into the large villa inherited by the "gang leader" and will experience all the aspects of this strange community of neo-hippies, lost and devoid of any morals, in a slow descent into the inferno of physical and psychological degradation.
However, the film has several questionable moments, both from the purely "cinematic" point of view and from the "content" perspective, alternating scenes of embarrassing uncertainty with rare moments of healthy, lucid madness.

Born as the second work of the criticized Dogma 95 manifesto (the first was the splendid "Festen" already reviewed here), the film reflects the self-imposed strict rules with maniacal precision:
- NEVER use constructed sets or fictitious scenarios.
- The camera is LIKE the human eye: no dolly, no tracking shots, no special effects shots or artifices such as flashbacks or narrative leaps.
- Never use soundtracks unless existing in the real environment.
- NO supports for the camera, tricks, or filters allowed.
- Filming strictly in color, in 35 mm and "the first take or at most the second".
- NEVER use professional actors.
- FORBIDDEN the celebration or deification of the Artist/director/actor.

This is to combat and oppose the falsity of making cinema today, where completely fake and artificially rendered films are rewarded by commonly adopted conventions that have distorted the truth of representation: an action, therefore, of redemption and expressive humility, stripping away frills, tricks, and embellishments to finally document shreds of real life.

These fake idiots are thus the metaphor of the Dogma group itself which, against rigid conventions, flaunts an anarchic, adolescent, and irresponsible desire to break the rules of the "System": they destroy restaurants hosting them out of pietism, scandalize neighbors with their senseless and crazy attitudes, destabilize social workers forcing them to flee, provoke rough motorcyclists in bars, heavily harass others' girlfriends in pubs, walk naked through the streets, engage in obscene orgies of frantic sex (3 minutes sadly cut in the Italian edition broadcast on Rai3 late at night).

The idiots do not provide answers, they don't care about the analyses and theories insinuating themselves among us unsuspecting spectators, they have no morals, ethics, or logic in their often gratuitously annoying actions, and slowly, what started as a foolish diversion will become their true obsession until they can no longer distinguish where "the game" begins and "reality" ends in a superimposition of planes and levels now indistinguishable.

The Idiots is a technically imperfect film that could have been much more aligned to its intended goal had it only paid better attention to certain passages, delved deeper into certain characters, and corrected certain often extremely annoying flaws which, although justifiable in theory, leave much to be desired in the finished product which often seems rushed, even in editing.
A film in its own way courageous, extreme, and groundbreaking in the vain hope of rediscovering, within worldwide cinema, a sort of lost virginity and the enchantment of being able to marvel like a child (an idiot?) at the things of a world now too stereotyped and standardized on now worn-out and much too rigidly framed patterns.

As if to say: the idea was worth 5 stars, but the result is only worth 3…