MovieChat Forums > Nymphomaniac: Vol. I (2014) Discussion > Life offends me...but I accept it.

Life offends me...but I accept it.

posted 10 years ago by burnt_reynoldz
3 replies | jump to latest

This movie has a lot to say about sexuality (men and women), love, lust, addiction, power, humanity, reflection, philosophy, religion, catharsis, reality, escape and fantasy. I don't want to start my account off by saying that people who dislike this film simply "did not get it". But the reality is that anytime a movie that has great acting and a great story is reviewed badly - it's usually because the reviewer could not identify with or relate to the story being told. Which is perplexing because often these people give good reviews to fantasy films that may have paralytic ideals and philosophies that mirror our own..but have no resonating statements to say about the world we really live in.

Maybe it's because I've experienced addiction, prostitutes, experimentation early on, life on the streets, and self examination that I appreciatte what this film puts out there...but really, I consider myself fortunate for being the type of person that would appreciate a film about something I didn't understand. ..because it showed me something I was ignorant to. Thx.

[–] dimsung_09 10 years ago

Very thoughtful and insightful post.

[–] lazarillo 10 years ago

I agree, good post.

But I ALSO think people are taking this movie way too literally. Some things really are not very believable. How many pretty teenage girls have a contest to see how many guys they can have sex with on a train? (If that were at all true, a lot of us guys would probably travel by train a lot more, ha, ha). You should question the truth, or at least the LITERAL truth, of a lot of the stuff that happens in this movie, just like you should question how blue-eyed Stacy Martin grows up to be brown-eyed Charlotte Gainsbourg or why Shia LeBouf is eventually replaced by an entirely different actor.

Some people who equate "feminism" with "anti-male" found the ending of Volume 2 to be "feminist", but I thought that was COMPLETELY metaphoric (I don't want to spoil it by explaining why). However, I think there IS a realistic "feminist" message here in the fact that this character would not have been considered all that abnormal or "nymphomaniacal" if it were only a MALE doing all these things.

[–] Dream_Cycle 10 years ago

A lot of people who charge Trier with misogyny seem to have major attentional bias in that they miss the overwhelming levels of misandry as well. The men in his films are often cowardly, deceitful, greedy, duplicitous, violent and hypocritical, among other things. Trier is less misogynist and more equal-opportunity misanthrope. In the end, I can appreciate when a someone wants to show the baser parts of ourselves to us, as long as we can refrain from allowing this nihilism to consume us completely. There is still some truth in it, a very subjective one perhaps.