The Idiots (1998)

Lars von Trier’s only Dogme 95 movie is his most immediately difficult provocation. It’s a film about middle-class Danes who pretend to have learning difficulties in public. They scream, disrupt restaurants, antagonise factory workers, drool, draw false sympathy and interrupt business meetings. Our immediate reaction to The Idiots tells us something about our immediate reaction to the topic of learning difficulties. We may want to ignore Trier’s movie. We may want to show that we’re decent and moral by quickly moving away from it or criticising it without having seen it. Consider this impulse. Consider what it says. Is it a mark of moral integrity or a retreat from discomfort?

When I first attempted to watch The Idiots, I gave up around the ten-minute mark. I justified doing so by telling myself that the film was unspeakably cruel. I was lying to myself, and I knew it. The truth was that the film made me feel uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to deal with the emotions that it was bringing up inside me. This is the film’s intention. Transgressive cinema should be uncomfortable and it should be confrontational. This isn’t a fault with Trier’s movie, it’s a strength. If you choose to retreat from The Idiots, you only prove its point.

Why does this group of middle-class intelligent Danes decide to do something so cruel? Their leader, Stoffer (Jens Albinus), offers a series of meandering pseudo-intellectual justifications about personal liberty and the changing face of society. He’s hiding from the truth. The film makes it clear that he pretends to be disabled because he enjoys it. It isn’t a political act, as he claims, it’s a selfish prank. Stoffer is a small-minded control freak from a wealthy family; he’s used to getting exactly what he wants. It’s almost as if he’s jealous of the care and patience afforded to the vulnerable and has decided that he deserves it too.

What about the rest of the group? At first it appears as though they might enjoy the wrongness of their act. Some of them simply get a kick out of mocking vulnerable people and disrupting public spaces without having to face any consequences. This doesn’t go for all of them. Slowly, Trier reveals that Stoffer’s group isn’t a partnership of equals. It functions like a cult, and some of its members are themselves vulnerable people. Ordinary Danes suffering with emotional problems and mental health issues have chosen to place themselves under Stoffer’s controlling leadership out of desperation and loneliness. Audience surrogate Karen (Bodil Jørgensen) is left reeling in the aftermath of a devastating family tragedy. Her new membership of the group is suggested to be an excuse for childlike regression rather than malicious acting out.

The film’s narrative is only part of its impact. A great deal of the film’s strength is generated by its Dogme style and the questions that it asks of its viewers. Trier uses The Idiots to make us consider how we think about people with learning difficulties. I think the impulsive emotion that most people feel is an unfortunate mix of discomfort and guilt. We want to be polite, we don’t want to be cruel and we don’t want to condescend. Though we may not say it, I think many of us secretly want to minimise the amount of time that we spend with such people. We prioritise our own comfort, we other those with learning difficulties and minimise our chance of saying or doing the wrong thing by leaving the room when an opportunity presents itself.

These are the emotions that The Idiots lives on. Scene after scene focuses on how the public reacts to Stoffer’s group. They hide their discomfort behind a wall of awkward politeness. They make their excuses to leave quickly. They restrain their anger and exasperation. This is what the film is about. The group are acting in the worst possible taste, but this is immediately obvious. We don’t learn anything by seeing Stoffer’s Idiots act callously. What we do learn is how the outside world processes their behaviour, how they impulsively react to it and how they choose to distance themselves from people that behave differently. We are this outside world. Watching the film reveals how we all instinctively behave. Stoffer enjoys the discomfort that he causes with his act. He wouldn’t if we were all less awkward.

Trier’s film is constantly in conversation with mainstream cinema. Consider the typical manner in which American movies depict characters with learning difficulties. Hollywood has a long history of making sentimental, prize-winning movies about this particular group of people. Such characters are habitually played by actors who do not share their conditions. Tom Hanks’ performance as Forrest Gump won him the Oscar for Best Actor. The same can be said for Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Sean Penn’s performance in I Am Sam saw him receive an Oscar nomination and Leonardo Di Caprio became a star through his portrayal of an autistic child in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

We’re more than happy to watch these movies, so why is The Idiots any different? Why does this film make us uncomfortable? I think there’s a clear reason: it calls us out. We’re not given warm, safe performances by trusted stars with a happy, inspiring ending. We’re made to face up to our own guilt and feelings of discomfort. Consider the audience that Trier’s movie is aimed at. The Idiots isn’t a gross-out comedy or a prestigious Hollywood drama. It’s an arthouse movie that will be watched almost exclusively by cinephiles. Its audience is unlikely to get the wrong idea and Trier is keen to avoid his film being misunderstood. Consider the sequence where cult leader Stoffer can’t deal with a visit from a pleasant group of houseguests. Why? Because they have Down Syndrome. It spoils his cruel fun because he feels too guilty to act out around them. This scene tells me that the film’s heart is in the right place.

Is The Idiots irresponsible? I don’t think so. The issue at hand is the time-old question of depiction and endorsement. The two are not synonymous. The Idiots doesn’t mock people with learning difficulties, it depicts characters who mock people with learning difficulties. Intention is everything, and this film intends to make us question how our society treats its most vulnerable members. Behind the button-pushing nature of the film’s premise is a core of empathy. Trier has always been fascinated by characters with emotional difficulties, so I suspect that Karen’s acceptance by Stoffer’s group is what truly interests him. He focuses his film on the way that different kinds of vulnerability intersect and generates sympathy by doing so.

The film also has a fascinating political dimension. Stoffer’s group of ‘Idiots’ live in a commune. Their headquarters is a large house owned by Stoffer’s rich uncle, who is under the mistaken impression that his nephew is preparing the house for a lucrative sale. The Idiots bring in sleeping bags, booze, candles and bags of food, scuffing the pristine wooden floors and turning the pretty manor into a squalid squat. This is the space in which they discuss their gibberish theories about unleashing their ‘inner idiot’ by acting out in public.

I think I know what Trier is getting at. Stoffer’s group is a curious satire of the 60s and 70s European political communes, groups that retreated from capitalist society to discuss radical politics, foment revolution and experiment with sexuality. The Idiots are middle-class, spoilt and self-aggrandising. They spout nonsense and act solely for their own pleasure and amusement. Trier suggests that this was always the case with every commune. Stoffer’s Idiots make passing, vague references to the semantics of Marxism and radical politics, but their commune exists for privileged members of society to act irresponsibly. This feels very pointed.

The Idiots holds an obvious appeal for cinephiles. It’s a classic Dogme 95 movie and a work of beauty to anyone with any interest in the movement. Trier adheres well to the Dogme vow of chastity, using gorgeous turn-of-the-millennium handheld digital photography, disregarding all standard rules of visual continuity and moving through a wide range of real-life locations. The tea-rooms, swimming pools, living rooms, gardens and offices of Copenhagen are all put on low-res display, enriching the film’s uncomfortable authenticity. I find this style of filmmaking utterly exhilarating and incomparably engaging. There’s such beauty in the raw picture quality, the fluidity of movement that it captures and the unpredictable energy of Trier’s experimental editing.

Interestingly, the camera used to film The Idiots was a Sony DCR-VX1000, a firm favourite of the skateboarding community. As a result, YouTube videos of 90s skateboarders have the same energy and tone as the movies of the Danish avant-garde. The MTV series Jackass, which effectively grew out of the California skating scene, uses the same exact camera. Jackass’s endless array of violent, zany stunts break certain Dogme rules, but the same equipment is used, everything is filmed on location and the cinematic style is purposely bare-bones. The influence of Dogme 95 can be found everywhere you look. Whether in Jackass or The Idiots, the result is cinematically radical and uncommonly engaging.

It’s been several days since I watched The Idiots and I can’t get it out of my head. It effectively raises many questions. How many films are truly about learning disabilities? How many of these films seriously explore the stigma around learning difficulties? How many of these films include actors who actually have some form of impairment? The Idiots is brash and abrasive, but it pushes against a tide of films that I find far more offensive and far less engaging. Trier’s film is a marvel of radical construction and a committed think piece. Don’t dismiss it.