In retrospect, it seems
astonishing that a mere four years after making the phantasmagoric thriller Europa (a.k.a. Zentropa), director Lars von Trier
and a collective of Danish filmmakers would go on to found Dogme 95, a movement
founded on an austere set of back-to-basics principles. Had von Trier submitted Europa
for Dogme certification, the number of rules he broke—Dogme 95 requires
handheld camera, color, natural light and sound, no "superficial action" or
genre fare, and more—would have landed him in moviemaking purgatory for
eternity. But on second glance, the von Trier of 1991 didn't change as much as
it appears. He's always been a bold conceptual artist—or, to detractors,
a gimmick-meister—and a postmodernist, anxious to lay bare the artificial
constructs that go into making a movie. So Europa, for all its technical
razzle-dazzle, still calls attention to its movieness through rear and front
projection, double exposures, and a shift between luminous, Old Hollywood
black-and-white and shocking bursts of color.
As for the story, it's a
bit of a muddle. Employing Max von Sydow as narrator/hypnotist, von Trier takes
viewers on a dreamy journey through the chaos and treachery of Germany just
after World War II. In an awkward English-language turn, French actor Jean-Marc
Barr plays a comically feckless American hired as an apprentice sleeping-car
conductor in occupied Germany. The train company, which once aided the
transport of Jews to concentration camps, has been reconfigured as a commercial
liner, but not everyone in the company or the country is on board, so to speak.
Barr winds up amid an underground circle of Nazi dead-enders called "werewolves,"
who commit terrorist acts to disrupt the Allied occupation. He also falls in
love with the daughter (Barbara Sukowa) of the train line's owner, a classic
femme fatale.
Europa has been described as a
Kafka-esque fever dream, and while that isn't inaccurate, it's also a cover for
the film's confounding narrative, which wends through murky noir plotting, a
polyglot of accents and performance styles, and surreal interludes. The best
approach is not to puzzle too much over the details, and to marvel at von
Trier's technical wizardry, which re-imagines the period through a patchwork of
vivid impressions. It's too bad the von Trier who made this movie has long
since retired.
Key features: Von Trier and producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen
contribute a lively commentary track in Danish; three documentaries cover the
production, the cast, and the meticulous storyboarding; and seemingly everyone
behind the camera gets an interview.