Idioterne (The Idiots)

1998 Von Trier joint

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Karen, a woman looking for answers and meaning in a life full of questions and futility, flees that life and joins a group of pretentious radicals calling themselves The Idiots. Led by the megalomaniacal Stoffer, they go out in public and "spazz," their term for acting like they are developmentally disabled. They make scenes in restaurants, during tours of insulation factories, at public pools, in the woods, and elsewhere. As they search for their "inner idiots," Karen tries to figure out what's going on and whether she belongs in the group or not.

First off, the self-important Lars Von Trier makes it very difficult to like his movies. He filmed this one as part of Dogme 95, an avant-garde filmmaking movement. And I expected to watch it and be reminded of a bowel movement. I don't want to spend too much time with this, but the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" includes the following rules, almost all of them strictly enforced for Idioterne:

1. On-location filming. No props.

2. No sound effects or music.

3. Hand-held camera.

4. Color but no special lighting.

5. No optical work and filters.

6. No "superficial action" (murders, weapons)

7. "Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden."

8. No genre.

9. Not widescreen.

10. No directorial credit.

Add to all of this pretentious artsy-fartsy nonsense the fact that this is a movie about people acting like they're mentally challenged, and I fully expected to kind of hate this movie. I really did. Instead, I unequivocally loved it. I honestly finished the movie and thought it was a real documentary about people who really did this. That's a testament to how great both the "story" and the acting is, the former not seeming written at all, natural and free-flowing, while the latter is the amongst the most realistic I have ever seen. At the center of this movie is Karen and her struggles although for most of the movie, she meanders around the edges of the group and has one of the least dynamic personalities of the idiots. But the action unspirals, the group's ideals are shattered, and we're left with Karen at the end, returning to her home and finishing the movie with an absolutely stunning moment that nearly made me cry. And that's strange because the majority of this movie is about as weird as anything I've ever seen. There are lots of funny Borat-like moments where the idiots interact with the unsuspecting public, but they're all moments that'll make you feel guilty while you laugh at them. That's probably Von Trier's jerky intent, making the audience uncomfortable, forcing us to leave our skin and dance around in our bones. The dogme rules don't exactly make this a comfortable experience either, and some shocking nudity and an even more shocking, and extremely graphic, orgy scene also force the audience far out of the comfort zone. Watching this without being affected in some way is impossible, and I think different people will grab different things from Idioterne. It's definitely not for everybody; in fact, I'm not sure it's for very many people at all, and a lot of people . For me, it's a shockingly original and amazing movie experience.