Thursday 16 December 2010

Idiots
[Idioterne;
Dogma 95]
(1998)

80%



Yet another film made by Whites expressing the many oddities of their culture. By pretending to be retarded the characters here play jokes on those who are taken in by their performance, yet no real answer to the lack of happiness in a materialistic culture is ever offered - save the schizophrenia on offer here. Trying to explore their 'inner idiot', they create what does not exist by retreating into childhood behavior patterns. The would-be critique of a shallow and empty West then becomes nothing more than just another example of it - just like the short-lived Hippie movement.

Like Godard's Weekend this movie is obsessed with a self-confessedly dogmatic system that especially and expressly evade artifice in that there is no post-production on the images and sound, but this does not represent any kind of thinking outside of the box that it intends: It laughs at rather than with.

The often very funny characterization is excellent, however, and the actors represent themselves as they really are to great effect as they expose the empty hypocrisy of those they meet, in stylistic parody of Candid Camera. The characters here clearly in a great deal of pain because of their learned emotional retardation - and the actors play it perfectly. R D Laing would have loved this.


Copyright © 2010 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.