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Anders W. Berthelsen is authentically daffy in the
Dogme 95 project, Mifune.
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The rules can be found in The Vow of Chastity: The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons and so on must not occur); the camera must be hand-held; genre movies are not acceptable. There are seven more regulations for creating the extreme, realist filmmaking that qualifies as Dogme 95. The goal is to force the truth out of characters and settings.
A lot has happened since Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg swore in these Dogme 95 rules on March 13, 1995. Vinterberg's The Celebration achieved critical success at Cannes for its scathing look at a twisted family reunion. The Idiots, von Trier's Dogme 95 effort, sets its tale in a bizarre commune whose inhabitants pretend to be mentally ill. There has even been a Dogme USA film, Harmony Korine's experimental feature, julien donkey-boy.
Danish filmmaker Soren Kragh-Jacobsen continues the momentum with the third Dogme 95 production, Mifune. The result is an unorthodox comic romance. A Copenhagen businessman, Kresten (Anders W. Berthelsen), confronts his past after returning home for his father's funeral. While there, Kirsten falls for his housekeeper, Liva (Iben Hjejle). But she has some dark secrets of her own.
Dogme 95 arrives like some spiritual update of the French New Wave and its school of low-budget, realist filmmaking. Such a metaphor would qualify von Trier as the Dogme 95 version of François Truffaut. Dogme 95 is receiving plenty of media attention. The irony is that the movement is better known that its members' films.
"I don't think that Dogme would have been a movement if the films weren't good," says Kragh-Jacobsen, speaking at last fall's Toronto Film Festival. "I mean if we had released three really bad Dogme movies, no one would have talked about it.
"But I think people love waves. They love something new, something fresh."
In a commercial landscape of Hollywood blockbusters, the idea of the film auteur, as least as defined by Truffaut and his New Wave followers, is something of a bygone theory. But Dogme 95 gives power back to its filmmaker. Dogme 95 is single-handedly creating the model for an 'Extreme Auteur.'
Kragh-Jacobsen, at 53 the eldest of the Dogme 95, wrote Mifune like a 25-page novel. He shot the film fresh, just four days after finishing the screenplay. The actors brought their own clothes to the 10-day production. After 10 weeks of editing, Mifune was ready for festival audiences. The experience was a refreshing throwback to his student days at the Prague Film School.
"Lars (von Trier) attracted me to this project because both of us were doing large-scale projects before," Kragh-Jacobsen says. "We're talking about waiting for light, waiting for costumes, waiting for sets, waiting for whatsoever. This is about going from supertankers to small ships."
A written apology confirms Kragh-Jacobsen's break with The Vow of Chastity. It seems he chased a neighbor's free-range hens into view in order to include them in the film. He also draped a window, to create the illusion of darkness; moved furniture; brought comic books to use as props; and used a hydraulic lift for two shots. More importantly, Kragh-Jacobsen breaks rule no. 10: He takes directing credit for the film.
"I did stick to rule no. 9, which says you have to do it on film with one camera," Kragh-Jacobsen says, laughing. "That was a great challenge. I think Thomas and Lars used three video cameras and Harmony (Korine) used 15 in various scenes for julien donkey-boy."
Flip through the pages of a fashion magazine, and you'll find The Vow of Chastity printed. It's media-made proof of Dogme 95's hip status. The struggle is to prevent Dogme from becoming a cinematic catchphrase. For a small country like Denmark, Dogme 95 is a chance to make its national film movement into a global force. Dogme 95 is about keeping the Danish language alive and vibrant. Other filmmakers from around the world are ready to join the fraternity. Becoming a member of the Dogme clique is easy as downloading the Dogme certificate on the www.dogme95.dk website. The appeal is the ability to tell stories on shoestring budgets.
"Young filmmakers have started to call us up and say 'We want to be a part of that. That's funny. That's really back to basics. That's back to what it's all about: good story, good acting and nothing else.' And we just said, 'OK, come and join us.' "
Oscar-nominated actress Emily Watson worked with von Trier on his breakthrough film Breaking the Waves (1996). It was not a Dogme 95 film, but its influence was already apparent to her.
"I think film is very much a richer place because he (von Trier) exists," Watson said. "His ideas inspired a whole generation of filmmakers to pick up a camera. Some of it is pure and noble. And some of it is crap. But it's moved the goal posts in terms of what you need to make a movie and how much money it takes. He pushes the boundaries. He's brilliant."
Like all cinematic waves, the problems occur after the movement reaches its crescendo. It doesn't take long for a critical backlash to form. The problem is when people view Dogme 95 as an attack on American blockbusters.
"I don't think we see it as the Hollywood beast," says Kragh-Jacobsen. "The Dogme movement is not protest against American films. I think it's a protest against films without characters. And that's not just Hollywood. That's many countries in Europe that want to copy Hollywood.
"I think that these 10 rules were some of the tools we just wanted to use to focus on a story. Because we're not talking about beating up the Americans, but maybe we can compete and tell stories"
Already, there are people working to tear Dogme 95 down. A critical documentary titled The Humiliated, about the making of von Trier's The Idiots, has played at film festivals. Korine ran a full-page apology in The New York Times to confess his use of soundtracks and special effects in julien donkey-boy. Von Trier did the same in European newspapers for The Idiots. For Dogme naysayers, such apologies are nothing more than shameless publicity.
Dogme 95 is a movement that aspires to become a school of filmmaking. Of course, there's always the chance that future filmmakers will make a new movement for themselves.
"Sometimes I don't understand why other groups of young filmmakers have to take these ideas," says Kragh-Jacobsen. "I could give them four or five other ideas for making films. I think that's where the commercialism is coming into it. A filmmaker wants to have their film called Dogme USA 5 or whatever. We give a country and a number and the Dogme name, and I find it a bit boring. Take the ideas and do them better. I suggest you make Dogme Year 2000 or call it something. Do another movement, but stick to the headline that it's about good stories and good acting." ©
