Economy Size Geek

Lutrede, De (2002)

In English this is called “The Purified”. Some where along the line I got French New Wave crossed with Dogme 95. The former being a film movement from before I was born - that influenced a lot of directors I like - the later being a relatively recent film movement (95 = 1995) that I had never heard of.

The film was shot about 5 years after Lars von Trier and friends announced their manifesto. Bascially in a nut shell - Dome 95 is about valuing the moment over the whole. Elminating the illusion from film. Or as I sort of think about it - if you made a home movie - you were keeping with Dogma 95 which doesn’t allow outside props, costumes, lights, sound - or any of the things that consitute the “technical” part of the film.

The film was interesting only because it showed that 5 years down the line these four directores who had set out to make this radically different kind of film expereince - were still struggling with what is and isn’t allowed. What parts of their films did and din’t conform to the rules of their own making. It was terribly satifing when Lars admits that in one of his films he had to pay porn actors to do the sex scene that his real actors were to modest to do. This was a total violation of the principals of the movement - so even the high priest of the movement still has to grapple with the issues of making the movie that is in his head versus making the movie as it can be made under the rules they have created.

I was somewhat reminded of the sort of debates I have seen in the open source community. So if you’ve seen puritanical GPL’ers go head to head with BSD’ers then you’ve already seen the most interesting part of this film.

That is unless you have seen some Dogma 95 films and wanted some background. To be honest I don’t think I’ve seen any of them. Dogville is one of them - and I almost saw it two years ago at SXSW - but so many people said it was overrated crap - I skipped it - and haven’t really been in a hurry to add it to the netflix queue.

Bottom Line: If you’re a student of film - it’s not a bad use of 74 minutes - otherwise - go watch something you might enjoy.