Amateur filmmaking

I don't think Lars Von Trier is an amateur, by any means. I think he's an important filmmaker who has made many excellent and arguably groundbreaking films. But Nymphomaniac didn't do it for me (so to speak).

When I was at uni I lived with a bunch of guys studying to make films. I got to see a lot of their short film efforts, which were almost always characterised by the following:

1. Flamboyant, showy style.
2. A script that was simply a vehicle for the writer to show off their philsophical musings and boundless knowledge.
3. An ending involving the screen cutting to black and mysterious gunshot ringing out.

Nymphomaniac spares us the excessive style, but it is guilty of the second two. There's even a moment when she draws attention to Seligman's ridiculous digressions. And that ending - what a cynical, disingenuous cop-out. Whereas Melancholia was probably Von Trier's most mature and insightful movie, Nymphomaniac felt like the rambling of a frustrated film student, as if the script had been dug out of the bottom of a drawer. Disappointing.


My movie reviews: www.rocknreelreviews.com/reviewed_by/rupert