{"id":3372,"date":"2014-12-27T22:05:24","date_gmt":"2014-12-27T22:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eoisabi.org\/?p=3372"},"modified":"2020-12-04T23:28:28","modified_gmt":"2020-12-04T23:28:28","slug":"europa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/englishroam.com\/?p=3372","title":{"rendered":"Lars von Trier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Von Trier first established his name as a filmmaker with a trilogy of films dealing with a dark and traumatised Europe:\u00a0The Element of Crime<\/b>\u00a0(1984),\u00a0Epidemic<\/b>\u00a0(1987) and\u00a0Europa<\/i><\/b>\u00a0(Zentropa<\/b>, 1991). However, it was his second television outing,\u00a0The Kingdom\u00a0<\/b>(1994) co-directed by Morten Amfred, that brought him public acclaim, and helped to define a style which would be formalised as Dogme 95\u2014a rigorously spare manifesto for film production. Dogme was a call for a more simple form of filmmaking, the use of hand-held cameras and available light, of non-generic plotting and an uncredited director. This aesthetic regime provided the background for his second trilogy,\u00a0Breaking the Waves<\/b>\u00a0(1996),\u00a0The Idiots<\/b>\u00a0(1998) and\u00a0Dancer in the Dark<\/b>\u00a0(2000). These films, contained in what he calls the \u00abGolden Heart Trilogy\u00bb inspired by a children\u2019s book, are stories of the surrender and sanctification of women.<\/p>\n

\u25ca\u00a0 Europa \u00a0– \u00a0Storyline\"\"<\/a><\/h4>\n

\u00abYou will now listen to my voice . . . On the count of ten you will be in Europa . . .\u00bb<\/em>\u00a0 So begins Max von Sydow’s opening narration to Lars von Trier\u2019s hypnotic Europa<\/em>\u00a0(known in the U.S. as\u00a0Zentropa<\/i>), a fever dream in which American pacifist Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr) stumbles into a job as a sleeping-car conductor for the Zentropa railways in a Kafkaesque 1945 postwar Frankfurt.<\/p>\n

With its gorgeous black-and-white and color imagery and meticulously recreated (if then nightmarishly deconstructed) costumes and sets, Europa<\/em>\u00a0is one of the great Danish filmmaker\u2019s weirdest and most wonderful works, a runaway-train ride to an oddly futuristic past.<\/p>\n

Get yourselves carried away with\u00a0Max von Sydow<\/strong>‘s mellow voice in the intro from Joachim Holbeck’s soundtrack to \u00a0Europa<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 (1991)<\/p>\n