Lars Trier
Lars Trier
Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter, best known for his films Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves, Melancholia and Europa. He is considered one of the great film auteurs and widely regarded as one of the most accomplished living directors in world cinema. In a prolific and controversial career spanning almost four decades, his work became distinct for its genre and technical innovation, the intensely confrontational - sometimes "humorous" - examination of existential, social and...
task
I give myself a task. This time, the task was to do a musical.
allowed changed hang interpret moved neither picture rule sound
The rule means-as I interpret it-that you are allowed to do nothing with the sound and picture after shooting: sound and picture hang together, and neither may be changed or moved afterwards.
interested path taken
I've taken the circuitous path of being interested in people.
certainly contains cut hope image perhaps sounds
Perhaps it sounds pretentious, but in one way or another I hope that you can see that every image contains an idea. It certainly sounds presumptuous-and perhaps it's also untruthful. But as I see it, every image and every cut is thought out. They are not there by chance.
accept emotions good instead means opera people sing
Opera is more like melodrama. And the good thing about opera is that if you can accept that people sing instead of talk, then you don't have to go in and out of it. And that means you can have your emotions with you.
allowed determined follow move needed scene shot within
We had shot very long scenes, and no scene was like the other. The actors were allowed to move within the scene as they pleased, and they never needed to follow any determined action.
image meant worked
Before, I worked with a storyboard, and that meant that the image wasn't good. There was a lot of things that you had to live up to.
colors dance dancing fond glamorous levels necessary people turn understanding
We had to turn up the colors in the dance sequences to make people feel that there were different levels of the film. I was not so fond of that, because it made the dancing more glamorous in a superficial way than what I really wanted, but it was necessary for the understanding of the two levels.
among enthusiasm feels felt finally heart
It felt important to find some actors who really had the enthusiasm to participate. And I think it feels as if the heart is in it among those we finally chose.
chairs containing doors few landscape might named painting pleased room serpent simple suppose tiger
I suppose Swedenborg might have been pleased to have a room named after him, a wall-papered room with two chairs and two doors and a simple painting of a landscape containing a tiger and a serpent and a few birds.
becomes character easily far good material pass pathetic situation visible
Visible good easily becomes trite; visually there is very little material left-you know, you make a sunbeam pass over a character or a situation and it becomes far too pathetic and banal.
added dialogue enjoy leads time
I enjoy dialogue that leads to something more comical, and at the same time I like the added poignancy, too.
argue scene
I would argue that the aesthetics in flattening out a scene completely are obsolete.
hypnosis
Idiocy is like hypnosis or ejaculation: if you want it, you can't have it-and if you don't want it, you can.