Director Sheet:

Name: Lars Von Trier

Year Born: 1956, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

Background: Lars started making films with a super 8 camera at the age of eleven and continued making them throughout high school. He then attended the National Film School of Denmark, while enrolled he made a number of films, two of which won best film awards in the Munich International festival of film schools. His next project was his first feature called The Element of Crime, which ended up winning the technical award at Cannes in France. This set up a relationship with Cannes in which he has gone on too win many more of their awards. Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg created a manifesto of genre film making called Dogme 95 in 1995. This Manifesto laid out the rules for what could be considered a Dogme 95 film. The basic premise of the genre is to set the stage for theme, acting and story and ignore all of the "Hollywood" style that has become expected of film makers now days. Although he has only done one true Dogme 95 film, The Idiots, he still lays pieces of his rules in his current work today. 

First Feature: The Element of Crime (1984)

Most Notable: Antichrist (2009)

Genres Explored: Depression, Sex, Sexual Identity, Taboo, Death, Nature, Humanity, Good and Evil, Women, Punishment.

Stylistic Tendencies: Documentary style camera for conversations, Cinematic landscapes and defining moments. Natural lighting. Handheld camera with intentional breathing focus. Vast wide arial shots, ignoring the 180 rule.

Typical content: Usually there is a female lead who in some way or another has a darkness inside of her. Most of the women seek out pain and suffering and cope with it sexually in sometimes brutal, rape like scenarios. There is usually a struggle between body and mind, sex and compassion, lust and emotion. 

Awards: Nominated for an Oscar with Best Music, Original song in Dancer in the Dark (2000)

At Cannes he has been nominated for the Palme d'Or award 9 times and has won once along with winning the jury prize, technical grande prize and best artistic contribution for Europa (1991). Over his career he has won over 75 awards  and another 57 nominations with most of those wins and nominations coming from Cannes, the highest regarded film festival in the world. 

Long-Term Collaborators: Charlotte Gainsbourg who starred in Antichrist  was also the supporting role in Melancholia and is in talks for his next film Nymphomaniac. 

Interesting Facts: He is the first film maker to ever be kicked out of Cannes Film Festival in history. This came the night before his premier of Melancholia when he joked about some antis-Semitic remarks. 

Antichrist

Lars Von Trier once again takes us on a downward spiral of depression and sexual tension in this tale of isolation. After losing their son a psychiatrist and his dark, depressed wife seek isolation in a cabin in the woods. The sweeping introduction shows us a prologue to the story, the death of boy and the birth of story. We are shown this through beautiful black and white slow motion footage until we are thrust back into reality after a chapter break to a world much more real to us. His handheld documentary style camera takes us through the dialogue as if it were real time. This real time is then split with moments of jump cuts and confusion only deepening the emotion and tension between the lens and the talent. His style is a mixture of realism with surrealism which harmonize into this dark, beautiful depressing picture that is hard to take your eyes off of. Much like Melancholia, there is a poetic balance between the raw emotions of the anxious camera and actors mixed with the tranquility of the steady camera and frame. This goes hand in hand with the story, chaotic throughout but sometimes controlled much like the emotions of Charlotte Gainsbourg. 

Melancholia

When the world comes to and end sometimes the most you can do is just build a fort made of sticks. Melancholia is the newest film from Von Trier starring Kristen Dunst. She plays a newlywed depressed and emotionally deprived woman awaiting the end of the world on her wedding weekend. Von Trier kept to the style of Antichrist with this one as we open with a prologue to the story all shot in slow motion and very cinematic. He keeps moments of pure aesthetic glory throughout the film mixed with raw, handheld emotion similar to Antichrist. Showing a more toned down approach to complicated characters rather than brutal ones in Antichrist we spend most of our time watching Dunst in thought or lack there of. This whole movie gives you everything you need to know about Von Trier's style, ignorance to the 180 rule, focus on story and emotion, a camera that travels and dances with the subject and landscapes that remind you of detailed Van Gogh's. He opens the doors to the possibility of art in hollywood, that film can be just as much about the form as it can be about the story and structure.