Lars Von Trier's E-Trilogy - Element Of Crime / Epidemic / Europa - Subtitled [DVD]

His first film, The Element Of Crime, is a moody colour-tinted European-noir unfolding in a post-apocalyptic city, where a hound-dog detective must search for a vicious child-murderer using only the book written by his mentor as a guide. The story is, of course, preposterous, with von Trier pitching the whole thing halfway between Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and the aforementioned Tarkovsky epic, with the film's sepia-printed dreamscapes giving way to an angst-ridden internal struggle for it's central character. von Trier leaves a lot of the deeper implications of the plot for the audience to work out, seemingly more concerned with navigating his camera around a series of nightmarish underground labyrinths where the story plays out. For some, it's a shallow attempt to pastiche the masters of European cinema in the guise of pulp fiction, whilst for others, it's a mysterious and evocative series of hallucinations and one of the most visually astounding works of "neo-noir" ever created. Regardless of where you stand; there's no denying the sheer talent of the young von Trier and his cinematic cohorts, as they breeze through the various codes and symbols synonymous with the genre, subverting the notion of both noir and science-fiction with a bleak and, to some extent, expressionistic thriller that is, quite possibly, unlike anything else you'll ever see.

The second part of the trilogy is a different beast entirely... a world away from the serious and overly constructed jumble of signs and signifiers found in The Element Of Crime. According to von Trier, Epidemic began as a bet between himself and the head of the Danish Film Institute who claimed that von Trier would be incapable of producing a film for no more than one million kroner. von Trier accepted the bet and produced Epidemic... a self-aware mock-documentary, inter-cut with outlandish scenes of an idealistic doctor flying across the Danish countryside in a helicopter, in order to stop a plague that is quickly spreading, cross country. The film is absurd, but a great deal of fun regardless (something we're not entirely used to from the auteur behind heartbreaking melodramas like Breaking The Waves and Dancer In The Dark), with the real director and screenwriter (von Trier and Niels Vørsel) playing the respective director and writer in the film within a film. von Trier even goes one further by appearing in the film's beautifully composed fantasy scenes (the film within the film within the film!!) as the abovementioned doctor, whilst his ex-wife appears briefly as a nurse. It's certainly not a film for everyone... the documentary footage is dodgy, with von Trier and Vørsel improvising lines about the nature of writing in front of a camera that wavers in a style not too dissimilar to his later TV epic, The Kingdom, whilst the fantasy sequences feature violent death, hypnosis, and men stood screaming, submerged in a lake. It's all good fun, and does at least have a sense of adventure and imagination about it... something that is all too rare in most films these days.

At the end of the day, Epidemic remains a little-seen curio (this is the first ever release of the film on any format in the UK!!), certainly not on the same level as the wonderful, if slightly enigmatic Element Of Crime..., which, in turn, is somewhat inferior to the most vital film in this collection, 1991's Europa. Europa is one of my very favourite films; a mysterious and purposely elusive neo-noir set shortly after the fall of Germany in the Second World War; shot through with references to the German expressionist cinema of Murnau and Lang, and with further references to similar films like Sabotage and The Third Man. von Trier's dizzying use of camera-tricks sets it out as one of the most beautiful films ever created, with the rich black and white cinematography (from Dryer's regular cinematographer Henning Bendtsen) giving way to sweeping crane shots, elaborate composition (a bird-eye-view of a manner house following the character from room to room ends up on a shot that looks more like a piece of abstract, expressionist art) and the use of front and rear-screen projection, which allows von Trier and his crew to juxtapose the black and white with vivid bursts of colour to denote the key-characters and scenarios within the film.

I'd go so far as to hail Europa as a masterpiece of pure cinematic invention, and a testament to von Trier's skill as a visual filmmaker without equal; before he founded the Dogme manifesto and moved into more minimalist filmmaking. The themes and concerns found in these films prefigure the notions explored in later projects like The Idiots, Breaking The Waves and the more recent Dogville, with these idealistic characters ultimately bringing about their own-downfall as their idealism gives way to arrogance. This box-set is absolutely vital for anyone with an interest in von Trier's career, with the three films lovingly restored and packaged; whilst the inclusion of von Trier's short films and various documentaries related to the man and his work allows us to revaluate von Trier' position as one of the most important filmmakers currently at work. It therefore goes without saying that The Europe Trilogy box-set is, without question, the best DVD release of the year.