The Idiots
(Idioterne)
Screening on Film
With Bodil Jørgensen, Jens Albinus, Anne Louise Hassing.
Denmark/Sweden/France/Netherlands/Italy, 1998, 35mm, color, 117 min.
Danish with English subtitles.
The second film in von Trier’s “Good Woman” trilogy (preceded by Breaking the Waves and followed by Dancer in the Dark), The Idiots is set in a Danish commune in which the members engage in acts of “spassing” (feigning mental and physical disabilities in public settings) to confront the hypocrisies of bourgeois society. The “good woman” in this instance is Karen, an introverted newcomer to the group with a dark secret. Although he had employed many of the techniques put forth in the Dogme 95 manifesto both before and after this film’s release, The Idiots is the only film the director produced under the movement’s collective banner. This rare screening of the original uncensored version of the film will be introduced by John Rockwell, New York Times cultural critic and author of a recently released monograph on the film published by BFI Modern Classics.