“I will be against all odds
standing like this deformed tree on the hill”, says Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg)
in Nymphomaniac:Volume 2 just before her very sweet friend and
interlocutor, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård), starts kindly persuading her in having a
sexual intercourse with him. She screams, shoots the poor old man and leaves
the damn apartments. Too perplexing for the body and too dashing for the soul,
Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Volume 1 and 2 (together only) is a
fascinating non-sexy novel with four hours of complete poetic distortion and
sensual investigation. Extensive discussions about the film were brought up
long before its first opening night. No wonder: the director, who has given a
lifetime ban from the Cannes Film Festival an account of his sympathy with
Adolf Hitler and whose films are always provocative and (or) sexual stories,
was expected to bring a new portion of uneven shock in his new dark drama.
When I got the first lovely
volume I was much confused that this film was intended for the public eyes. Or
better to say, adopted for them? It struck me as something that played a joke
with my own expectations. Its intimate privacy went too deep inside my own
privacy, so to say. However, I do not
mean sexual scenes at this point. Who was looking for sex hardly found any
there. Yes, a modest sadist, a screaming betrayed wife and Joe’s multicultural
sexual exploits with different types of penises are super detailed but von
Trier’s might be that kind of a director who tricks its audience fiercely. Thus
this was art or the hint at art at the minimum. At least for me. What kind of
art? It is the art that annoys. Remember? Joe is travelling across her extended
chapters and looking for the signs on the walls in the apartments while
virginal Seligman with blissful face reduces (or extends?) all her provocative
creeds to mathematical laws and ecclesiastical dogmas. It is the art that
triggers. Something under my skin to be squeezed, something inside my brains to
think silently about the movie on the way home in a crowded lonely tram. No
fantasies here: just a story of how to be who you are, enjoy it yet pay for it
soon after.
As minutes passed by it has
become clear that all that actually makes sense. The darkened flashy drama with
a brilliant cast, energised settings in Cologne and juicy shots has brought
real physical bruises on the screen and mental ones for my mind. It is always
more important what your deeds have done to you that what you actually has
done. The deformed tree is vital by itself. Even if you f*cked thousands of
men.
- Margo Kirlan
