The Idiots is the latest film made by Danish director Lars von Trier in line with the rules of the Dogma 95 group. Its members restrict themselves to hand-held cameras, use no artificial lighting or tacked-on music, shoot no scenes out of sequence, etc. Von Trier refers to this as a sort of chastity belt.
While the rules of the Dogma group have obvious advantages for young directors seeking to make affordable films, the danger exists of a vice, i. In fact, intrinsic to the power of film as a medium is the multiplicity of ways it can comprehend, reflect and enhance the complexities of reality.
The Dogma rules lend the film a documentary character, but in fact The Idiots is based on a script written by the director in four days! One of the idiots clutches the hand of a solitary dinner guest, Karen, who feels empathy with the disabled and decides to accompany them.
At one house the door is slammed in their face, at the second door they receive money from a grudging mother and her child. At this point it is clear that this particular group of retarded persons have the luxury of being able to shed their disability and return to the ranks of everyday society when they want to. In a handful of scenes the director seems to try to genuinely depict the feelings and emotions of intellectually retarded people faced with a climate of misunderstanding and hostility.
Group sex, he retorts, and the scene is played out in an ugly and self-conscious fashion. On another occasion the group ramble abjectly through the woods and Stoffer ruminates on the aims of the group. The idiot, he explains is the man of the future—the key to happiness is to liberate the inner idiot, to let the inner idiot out. Von Trier is honest enough to show that the attempt to establish a sort of commune based on the principle of revealing and releasing the inner idiot fails.
