Nymph()maniac: Volume 1

Lars von Trier is the art-house equivalent of the celebrated trickster William Castle, whose films were always only a fraction of the overall experience without the additional attractions and means of promotion prepared by the master. Von Trier has elevated the contemporary trend of massaging the media long before a film is released to a concept in and of itself, and has raised marketing and PR to the level of art. He took those originally utilitarian tools and made them part of the overall work, where the film is not the objective, but rather the culmination of a single grand performance – in this case, it is a culmination that has been greatly delayed, as Nymph()maniac is divided into two parts and released with a title informing viewers that they will see only the censored and abridged version of the fabled director’s cut. Von Trier and his collaborators are simply masters of packaging and promotion (which is brilliantly evident in the trailer for the second part, which first appears in the closing credits of Volume I and raises grand promises, which of course remain unfulfilled).  At the core of von Trier’s work like ambivalence between the cult of the auteur that he has built around himself over the years, as well as the highlighting of the manipulativeness and falsity of art and artists. The director’s latest piece looks like a frank treatise on human sexuality, which clearly is supposed to go against the grain of bourgeois notions of normalcy, but at the same time, it comes across merely as a calculated act, a way to profit magnificently from the age-old adage “sex sells” in today’s ridiculously strait-laced world. Nymph()maniac itself is surprising as a film hypertext, simply a sort of nymphomaniac.wiki, that doesn’t give viewers only text to analyse and interpret, but directly gives them all interpretations and references with citations. The lofty phrase that there is nothing to add to a film because it already has everything is absolutely entirely true this time.  It’s as if the aim was to make a film about which there is nothing more to say than the primitive “I liked it/I didn’t like it" (if you don’t want to quote what was said in the film or draw attention to the obvious). So, let’s say that Nymph()maniac is mostly entertaining (particularly in its minor details, such as the brilliant birth sequence), but it’s more often rather overly clever, as it constantly refers to and adores its own narrative. The fourth wall doesn’t get broken here, but is actually set up behind the viewers (just as in the case of browsing the internet, especially social media, where perceptions from individual links and threads immediately disappear in the next text). As a result, the film’s main positive aspect remains the fact that, even though sex has the role of a commodity and an attraction in the project and in the promotion of Nymph()maniac, the narrative doesn’t approach sexuality in an exploitative way, but rather with fondness and empathy, particularly with respect to its potentially more shocking forms presented in the second part. Generally speaking, however, it is absurd, albeit apt, that the labels “provocateur” and “enfant terrible” have been assigned to a filmmaker who, at least in his last two films, hasn’t done anything but simply show themes such as sex, family and relationships in a more sincere, or more cynical, form in comparison with the sentimentality of mainstream and festival midcult films. (12/19/2013) (less) (more)