It's common knowledge that Epidemic began it's life as a bet between von Trier and the head of the Danish Film Institute, with the emphasis being that von Trier would be unable to make a film for under one-million kroner. Trier accepted the wager, and set about constructing a film that would move away from the rigid compositions and moody atmosphere of his first film, The Element Of Crime, whilst simultaneously advancing on it's themes of post-war devastation, optimism in the face of horror, and idealism. As a result, Epidemic is presented as "part two of the Europa trilogy"... continuing on from the themes and ideologies behind his first film, whilst concurrently laying the groundwork for his third project, Europa.
Taking into account the low-budget and the intentions behind it's conception, it is at times quite difficult to view Epidemic as anything more than a private joke between von Trier and his film-industry friends. The plot is self-referential and a little cluttered, revolving around a scriptwriter and director attempting to write the outline of a screenplay in five days after a computer virus has destroyed a year and a half's worth of work. To keep costs down, von Trier and his co-writer Niels Vørsel play the filmmakers within the film, trying desperately to flesh out their story about an idealistic young doctor going from town to town in an attempt to stop a life threatening plague that is destroying the country. The bulk of the film is shot very much in the documentary style, with shambolic camera-work, rough cuts and a bare, minimal use of production design. Some have noted how this style prefigures the use of back-to-basic film-making demonstrated in von Trier's later dogme film The Idiots, which is true, though for me the effect was more akin to von Trier and Vørsel's classic TV mini-series, The Kingdom.
The rest of the film is made up of beautifully photographed fantasy scenes that attempt to convey the basic story of the film within the film within the film. von Trier stars again in the fantasy scenes as the doctor flying over the country on a rope tied to a helicopter or discussing the meaning of life and death with a black priest who previously turned up as an eccentric cab driver (von Trier regular, Michael Simpson). The fantasy scenes are beautifully composed and photographed in lush 35mm black and white by Carl Dryer's favourite cinematographer Henning Bendtsen (who also shot the majority of Europa), which juxtaposes nicely with the high-contrast black and white 16mm footage of the real-world sequences. These sequences are a joy to watch, showing us the meticulous von Trier of The Element Of Crime, with the great majority of these brief sequences coming close to the visual poetry of filmmakers like the aforementioned Dryer, and von Trier's great hero at the time, Tarkovsky.
The real-life scenes just sort of ramble along - which is a great deal of fun if you don't find Lars and Niels too annoying as characters - as they go about writing this nonsense film that ends up spilling out into the real world in a bizarre and suitably absurd fashion. The strangest set of scenes in the whole film has to be the lengthy sequence towards the middle of the film in which the writer and director drive to Cologne to meet with the actor, Udo Kier, who, upon meeting the filmmakers, proceeds to recite an emotional monologue about his mother's death, and a secret she had kept pertaining-to his birth. Other bizarre scenes include a flashback to a moment in Niels' life, where he talks about pretending to be a teenager in order to trick a young American girl into revealing details about her home life, so that, like Kafka, he would be able to write a book about America, without actually having to go there.
The film establishes many of von Trier's cinematic preoccupations not already formed by The Element Of Crime, in particular the idealistic doctor blinded by his own arrogance, the use of medical horror (an early trip to the Kingdom hospital for Lars to observe a clandestine operation on a naked man), European devastation, questions of faith, improvisation and, last of all, hypnosis. Hypnosis was a key narrative device in all of the Europe trilogy, often used to position the audience within the mindset of the lead character... Here, however, it's used more as window dressing, as Lars and Niels invite a hypnotist and his subject to a dinner party with their financier at the Danish Film Institute so that, through hypnosis, the girl can act out the ending of their film. Here, the whole thing becomes far too surreal, as bubonic cysts break out on the guests, and Niels' wife starts vomiting blood all over the dinning room. Despite that lurid description, the use of actual hypnosis and the unbelievable horror etched onto the protagonist's face, makes it one of the most powerful scenes ever witnessed in a von Trier film (and yes... that does include the climax of Dogville, and The Idiots).
Ultimately, it's hard to really know what to think of Epidemic. Like The Element Of Crime, von Trier has since disregarded it as a post-modern parody of his cinematic hero's... then again, he also once said it was his favourite film of his own... so who knows? I personally quite like it, and I find the integration of the documentary style footage with Bendtsen's beautifully composed fantasy sequences to be quite spectacular and fairly hypnotic. At the end of the day, I'd say that this is a film for von Trier fanatics only, with everyone else probably despairing of all the self-aware references (a conversation towards the beginning about a script called "The Cop and the Whore" references The Element Of Crime) or the possibility that it's all just a silly joke.
Taking into account the low-budget and the intentions behind it's conception, it is at times quite difficult to view Epidemic as anything more than a private joke between von Trier and his film-industry friends. The plot is self-referential and a little cluttered, revolving around a scriptwriter and director attempting to write the outline of a screenplay in five days after a computer virus has destroyed a year and a half's worth of work. To keep costs down, von Trier and his co-writer Niels Vørsel play the filmmakers within the film, trying desperately to flesh out their story about an idealistic young doctor going from town to town in an attempt to stop a life threatening plague that is destroying the country. The bulk of the film is shot very much in the documentary style, with shambolic camera-work, rough cuts and a bare, minimal use of production design. Some have noted how this style prefigures the use of back-to-basic film-making demonstrated in von Trier's later dogme film The Idiots, which is true, though for me the effect was more akin to von Trier and Vørsel's classic TV mini-series, The Kingdom.
The rest of the film is made up of beautifully photographed fantasy scenes that attempt to convey the basic story of the film within the film within the film. von Trier stars again in the fantasy scenes as the doctor flying over the country on a rope tied to a helicopter or discussing the meaning of life and death with a black priest who previously turned up as an eccentric cab driver (von Trier regular, Michael Simpson). The fantasy scenes are beautifully composed and photographed in lush 35mm black and white by Carl Dryer's favourite cinematographer Henning Bendtsen (who also shot the majority of Europa), which juxtaposes nicely with the high-contrast black and white 16mm footage of the real-world sequences. These sequences are a joy to watch, showing us the meticulous von Trier of The Element Of Crime, with the great majority of these brief sequences coming close to the visual poetry of filmmakers like the aforementioned Dryer, and von Trier's great hero at the time, Tarkovsky.
The real-life scenes just sort of ramble along - which is a great deal of fun if you don't find Lars and Niels too annoying as characters - as they go about writing this nonsense film that ends up spilling out into the real world in a bizarre and suitably absurd fashion. The strangest set of scenes in the whole film has to be the lengthy sequence towards the middle of the film in which the writer and director drive to Cologne to meet with the actor, Udo Kier, who, upon meeting the filmmakers, proceeds to recite an emotional monologue about his mother's death, and a secret she had kept pertaining-to his birth. Other bizarre scenes include a flashback to a moment in Niels' life, where he talks about pretending to be a teenager in order to trick a young American girl into revealing details about her home life, so that, like Kafka, he would be able to write a book about America, without actually having to go there.
The film establishes many of von Trier's cinematic preoccupations not already formed by The Element Of Crime, in particular the idealistic doctor blinded by his own arrogance, the use of medical horror (an early trip to the Kingdom hospital for Lars to observe a clandestine operation on a naked man), European devastation, questions of faith, improvisation and, last of all, hypnosis. Hypnosis was a key narrative device in all of the Europe trilogy, often used to position the audience within the mindset of the lead character... Here, however, it's used more as window dressing, as Lars and Niels invite a hypnotist and his subject to a dinner party with their financier at the Danish Film Institute so that, through hypnosis, the girl can act out the ending of their film. Here, the whole thing becomes far too surreal, as bubonic cysts break out on the guests, and Niels' wife starts vomiting blood all over the dinning room. Despite that lurid description, the use of actual hypnosis and the unbelievable horror etched onto the protagonist's face, makes it one of the most powerful scenes ever witnessed in a von Trier film (and yes... that does include the climax of Dogville, and The Idiots).
Ultimately, it's hard to really know what to think of Epidemic. Like The Element Of Crime, von Trier has since disregarded it as a post-modern parody of his cinematic hero's... then again, he also once said it was his favourite film of his own... so who knows? I personally quite like it, and I find the integration of the documentary style footage with Bendtsen's beautifully composed fantasy sequences to be quite spectacular and fairly hypnotic. At the end of the day, I'd say that this is a film for von Trier fanatics only, with everyone else probably despairing of all the self-aware references (a conversation towards the beginning about a script called "The Cop and the Whore" references The Element Of Crime) or the possibility that it's all just a silly joke.