The cat doesn't need to be fed, it always stays healthy and is fluffy, but never looses hair. It doesn'z trigger allergy. It will die of old age after 20 years. You can give it bellyrubs, pick it up and carry it around etc.
Doesn't matter if dead or alive.
Mine would be Kubrick directing a Lars von Trier screenplay.
Would you say there is a clear binary distinction between "good" and "bad" Karma or is there just general Karma whose value is determined by what whoever it applies to wants.
Firstly, I usually dislike use of color in Hitchcock films where exceptions are highlighted to an extreme degree while the main part of the movie looks bland. Also, depth is mostly lacking. But more specifically I can't find anything cinematic in the camera always having the same perspective of observing a far away flat which look tiny in every shot.
The whole apartment complex doesn't feel alive, the inhbitants feel like puppets, each with their own way of pressuring Jeff into marriage. This makes the movie, which according to Hitchcock was meant to be anti-moralizing, extremely moralizing. And of course there has to be phallic symbolism with the camera Jeff uses.
Verge calls out Jack for all the women he kills being stupid. Simple is obviously simple, Uma Thurmans character talks herself into getting killed and the second lady lets him into his house despite him obviously tricking her. But what was stupid about the mother?
For me it's when he talks about the Noble Rot and eventually leads it to Concemtration Camp victims.
One thing I noticed is that the credits are Black on White instead of the usual White on Black, as if we're still seeing a negative
Both are the story of a life, as a hommage to Lars von Triers own life, told through the perspective of a dialoge between two opposites, with lots of references to culture and history through stock footage. But the differences start right at the beginning. While "Nymphomaniac" builds its framework story up patiently through what might be the most elegant movie opening ever, in THTJB we just instantly hear voices when the movie start and don't get anything about their conversation fleshed out.
As opposed to Seligman and Joe, Jack and Verge remain simple characters. They are more opposite poles, where one thinks art must be built on love and humanism while the other one thinks art shouldn't have limits at all, both being obviously too extreme positions. Their dialogue sometimes feels like lacking connection, like important parts of the screenplay are missing. The walk-in freezer, one of the main locations of THTJB, is the most un-cinematic place I'ver ever seen, with it's ugly grey tones. Also, THTJB severely overuses its music by spamming Glenn Gould and Bowies "Fame" constantly. "Nymphomaniac" used its main theme, "Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major", far more sparingly, so that it feels special.
The movie has a few really weird transitions in its voice over.
For example, Verge follows "This illustration can be used for any addicts tale of woe. The alcoholic empties the bottle at the zenith etc etc." with "But what about the family?", despite there being no relation to the topic of family at all.
But more noteworthy, Jack follows "Some people claim that the atrocities we commit in our fiction are those inner desires which we cannot commit in our controlled civilisation, so they're expressed instead through our art." with "I don't agree. I believe heaven and hell are one and the same. The soul belongs to heaven and the body to hell. The soul is reason and the body is all the dangerous things, for example art and icons." How is that in any way a refutation of us commiting atrocities in our art because we can't commit them in society? Heaven and Hell have zero to do with it, the only connection is the mention of art alongside icons.
I bet that stuff like this made far more sense in the screenplay, but important context was lost when cutting it to fit the movie format.
The last two LvT projects, THTJB and "Riget Exodus", both contain a sound that is the product of millions of life forms screaming in pain. What's up with that? Is Lars von Trier trying to tell us something?