The architect of suffering. Lars von Trier is the most provocative and most precisely intentional filmmaker working in European cinema today. Since 1984, across a body of work divided into formal trilogies and personal obsessions, he has constructed an oeuvre defined by a single, unflinching conviction: that goodness is punishable, that innocence invites destruction, and that the world will find a way to break anyone pure enough to believe otherwise.
Devastating, and entirely earned. Bess McNeill is wired with only three variables — God, Love, and Community — and the film watches, with unbearable patience, as all three turn against her.
Uncomfortable by design. Von Trier leaves you without the tools to pass judgement on his characters — which is itself the provocation. The questions it leaves behind are the ones that matter.
The saddest film I have ever seen. The best of the trilogy. Björk is extraordinary in every scene, in every song, in every terrible moment the film places her in. Sits comfortably in my personal top five of all time.