The last time we met Lars von Trier, the earth was being smashed by a rogue planet. Then before that, in Antichrist, Wilem Defoe was having his testicles smashed and Charlotte Gainsbourg was cutting off her clitoris. Time to put the children to bed, because we have the final part of the ‘depression’ trilogy - Nymphomaniac, where it’s Charlotte Gainsbourg’s turn to get smashed, this time by hundreds of penises, one of which happens to belong to Shia LaFuckingBeouf.

Yep, that’s right, Shia LaFuckingBeouf; the weasley, barely sentient kid from Transformers. Thankfully, contrary to his terrifying promises when the film was cast, we don’t get to see his penis, but we do get to see a porn star have their penis grafted onto his crotch via the wonders of CGI. Ah, what a great job for the tech wizards. ‘What did you do today, darling?’ ‘I’m working on Nymphomaniac, the new von Trier film.’ ‘Oh, that’s exciting!’ ‘Yeah, I’m pasting a porn star’s erect penis onto Shia LeBeouf’s crotch as he has simulated sex.’ ‘Oh...’

So yeah, it’s little weird having the kid from Transformers fool around with a girl and then have von Trier suddenly cut to a very artistic shot between LaBeouf’s legs where you can see his massive stunt penis have full penetrative sex.

And now as you shift uncomfortably in your seat and try and change the subject, you ask me how his acting is. Has he matured into a fine thespian? Like fuck he has. His acting is immature and unconvincing and his attempt to perfect an English accent is gut-wrenchingly embarrassing. For half a second it sounds okay, then it sounds fucking awful and then it sounds like he’s swallowed an Australian. It’s one of the worst vocal performances I’ve heard. Just either cast an Englishman in the role or have him speak in his normal voice. Make up some bullshit reason for why an American is living in the UK.

LaBeouf’s undetermined age doesn’t lend him any credibility either. We first see him as a teenager and then we see him as an adult. Funny thing is, though, that as a ‘teenager’ he doesn’t look any different to when he’s an adult. LaBeouf is one of those unfortunate people who looks like he could be aged anywhere between 12 and 35. It’s hard to take him seriously as either a teen or adult.

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Stellan Skarsgard don’t fare much better. Gainsbourg mumbles morosely into a cup of coffee and Skarsgard comes across as a pretentious simpleton. Yes, that is a contradiction but von Trier somehow manages to achieve it. While Gainsbourg is recounting her experiences as a teenager where she fucked an entire train-load of men, Skarsgard is comparing it to angling and talking about Fibonacci numbers. It’s Iike von Trier has made a fuck-happy Forest Gump.

But the wraparound story of a sex-obsessed individual recounting their exploits to an avid listener reminds me of Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon. In that film, Peter Coyote tells his story to a salivating Hugh Grant. But while Bitter Moon is joyfully trashy, Nymphomaniac is po-faced. It somehow manages to make sex seem like the most depressing thing in the world. It also doesn’t have the emotion and tragedy of Bitter Moon (at least not in this first part). At heart, Bitter Moon is a deeply sad film. Nymphomaniac, meanwhile, is half joke, half depressed rant.

It also suffers from a man’s deluded idea of female sexuality. There’s a scene where two girls, one of which is our ‘heroine’ Joe, are going through a train, trying to fuck as many men as possible. It’s a competition between the two women. Whoever fucks the most guys, ‘wins’. It’s something that only a man would come up with. Sport fucking. Fucking like it’s a match between Liverpool and Manchester United.

While the portrait of female sexuality is misjudged and adolescent, the portrait of male sexuality is just depressing. None of the men have any willpower. None of them are able to control their impulses. One man, who’s travelling back on the train to see his wife, is powerless to stop our heroine from giving him an earth-shattering blow-job. Everyone here is just giving in to their most basic instincts.

Perhaps the only ‘normal’ character is Joe’s father. A seemingly ordinary, decent man, he shares a love of nature with his daughter and is attentive and kind. But even here you can kind of sense that something is off. At one point he catches his daughter looking at book of female anatomy - she’s looking at the clitoris. Her father smiles but doesn’t say anything. While nothing overt happens, their relationship feels a little incestuous.

But this is perhaps the most believable part of the film. This feels like a genuine human relationship. Joe even lets her father repeat stories she’s already heard many times before just to make him feel better. There’s love there. And this is maybe why Joe engages in joyless sex. She wants to make men happy. She needs their attention.

One of the most plausible sequences in the film is when Joe sleeps around in her father’s hospital. In order to escape the pain of her father’s demise, she repeatedly fucks a hospital employee. But while this feels convincing, von Trier has to be his puckish self and include a saucy detail once Joe’s father dies. Joe becomes aroused and we see a dribble drip down the inside of her leg.

But this is how fucked up this film is. The star performer in this movie is Christian Slater! The guy who was Uwe Boll’s muse in Alone in the Dark and who began turning up in direct-to-video clag like Hollow Man 2. He’s miles better than Skarsgard and Gainsbourg. Miles better. It kind of blows my mind.

With her father dead, Joe decides to pursue Jerome (Shia LaFuckingBeouf). He’s an absolutely worthless humanoid - a vain, greasy, arrogant nincompoop. Why any woman would desire this individual, I don’t know. But sex addicts rarely make sound decisions, so I shouldn’t be surprised that Joe would seek attention from him. Regardless, it’s difficult to watch these scenes because the acting is so damn wretched. And the ending of the film, with Joe crying, ‘I can’t feel anything’ lands with a dull thud. Did you ever feel anything, Joe? Did you really?

It would be an understatement to say that Lars von Trier polarises audiences. It seems that half the people think he’s a genius, while the other half think he’s a talentless idiot.

I certainly belong to the former but Melancholia is a first for me - I experienced both ends of the von Trier spectrum in one movie. The first half is an appalling, crappy, half-baked mess while the second half is a powerhouse.

The first half details the wedding reception for newlyweds Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard). The first time we see them, they’re in the back of a limo as the driver tries to navigate a narrow country road. He has difficulties trying to get his car round a particularly tight corner.

I immediately took a dislike to the couple. They make snide comments about the driver and then when they finally go to help him, it seems like they’re trying to have fun at his expense - both of them have a go at trying to get the car round the tight corner but it seems like Justine has never driven before; she can only giggle when she smashes the front of the car into a cinder block (at one point the driver begs them not to damage the vehicle).

They arrive a couple of hours late to their reception. Given these circumstances, you’d think the newlyweds would be apologetic and compliant. Instead they immediately run off to goof about in the stables. They behave like children.

The friends and family of these nitwits aren’t much better. Justine’s mother (Charlotte Rampling) is a contender for the most miserable person on the planet, Justine’s father (John Hurt) is the resident ‘comedian’ who thinks that it’s a great idea to fuck around with the waiting staff, Justine’s boss (Stellan Skarsgard) is a selfish prick who doesn’t attempt to hide the fact that he’s only interested in Justine for her ability to make money, Justine’s sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is dull and gloomy and Justine’s brother-in-law (Kiefer Sutherland) is a wealthy jackass. There’s a very high concentration of pricks.

The opening hour ends up serving as an anti-Deer Hunter. In Cimino’s film, the wedding reception helps us to identify with the characters and to form an attachment to them, so that when they’re exposed to the horrors of war, the pain is almost unbearable. In Melancholia, the reception seems to distance us from them.

It’s made clear that Justine is a troubled woman but her relationship with her new husband is so hollow and facile that it almost beggars belief. At one point he gives her a photo of an apple orchard - apparently he’s bought the land in the hope that they’ll grow old together there. But when Justine is called away from the room, she leaves the photo behind. So much for happily ever after.

But as thoughtless and uncaring as this is from Justine, her husband doesn’t really deserve any sympathy. At the end of the evening he tries consummate the marriage, but he’s about as smooth as a crocodile and Justine brushes him away. The man has all the charm and class of a sewer rat.

The film’s nadir occurs when Justine leaves her husband to gloomily wander her brother-in-law’s golf course. Following her is one of her boss’s lackeys. Rather than tell the guy to piss off, Justine pushes him to the ground and fucks him. The staging is horrible. Apparently the kid gets an erection in about two seconds and then we see Justine bouncing on top of him - it looks like she’s riding his stomach.

But of course the scene doesn’t work on a deeper level either. I get that Justine is supposed to possess a depressive personality. And I know that manic depressives are prone to wild mood swings and engage in self-destructive behaviour, but the acting and the writing just aren’t good enough. Justine just jumps from Point A to Point B to Point C without adequately communicating the inner turmoil that is leading her to behave like this.

There was one point in Melancholia when I was ready to completely write it off. After getting fucked by Justine, the lackey tells her that they should go into business together, saying that, after all, they’ve had ‘good sex’. [insert sound of a cosmic forehead slap ringing across the galaxy]

Thank fuck then that I have an almost pathological inability to abandon a film, because the second half is amazing.

The planet Melancholia is heading towards Earth. The official story is that it’ll just pass by. However, other people say that it’s going to smash right into the Earth and destroy everything.

The second half begins with a severely depressed Justine staying with her sister Claire at her enormous mansion. Justine can barely move and finds even the simplest everyday functions impossible - she can’t even raise her legs to get in the bath. Obviously distraught, Claire does her best to raise Justine’s spirits. In one scene she cooks her sister her favourite dish - meatloaf. At first Justine seems to enjoy it but then she begins sobbing, saying that the meal tastes like ashes.

Her marriage in ruins and her life a complete mess, it seems like Justine has already experienced her own private apocalypse. It’s only when a much bigger disaster begins to loom that she rouses from her slumber and returns to something like herself. When she’s already lost everything, what is there to fear?

Indeed, it seems that Justine openly welcomes the end of life on Earth. Like she’s suddenly become Werner Herzog or something, she proclaims that all life on Earth is evil and it deserves to die. And then when Melancholia does its fly-by of Earth, she welcomes it like a siren - in the un-Earthly glow of the rogue planet, she bathes nude in the river. Perhaps Melancholia is a welcome release from her terrestrial problems.

Claire’s husband John doesn’t believe that Melancholia presents any danger. He and his son watch the planet get closer and the fly-by is a cause for celebration. His son even invents a contraption that helps track the rogue planet. With a stick and a loop of wire, he’s able to see if Melancholia is getting smaller or bigger. As predicted, after the fly-by, Melancholia begins to move away. It seems like everyone is safe.

In the morning, though, there’s an eerie quiet. Claire goes to the stables and sees that the horses are completely still and calm. She then finds her husband’s body - he’s killed himself with an overdose. Claire rushes back to the terrace of her mansion, picks up her son’s invention and sees that Melancholia has come back and is closer to the Earth than it was before.

Claire’s reaction to the impending disaster is sheer panic. She has a son, a good home and a comfortable life, and she doesn’t want to lose these things. Justine on the other hand is icily calm. She even mocks Claire’s idea of having a farewell party with drink and music - the end of the world is imminent and you want to have wine and music; how bourgeois!

Justine realises that hysteria won’t accomplish anything and makes sure that her nephew experiences the least amount of trauma possible. She says that she’s going to make him a magic cave out of sticks and that it’ll protect them. After so much selfishness and self-absorption, she finally achieves a state of grace with this act of decency and kindness.

It’s quite amazing how tense the final half of the film is, especially as we already know the ending - the prologue gives it away. The spectre of death looms over everyone and the inevitability of their demise is crushing. We get to see all of their hopes dashed, we get to see them panic and struggle and flail around like insects avoiding a boot that wants to stomp them - it’s a psychologically stressful film, especially if you have a family; you’ll do anything to protect them but what if you’re completely powerless?

It’s also a fantastic decision to have such a small focus. At one point I wondered how the rest of the world was reacting, but what does it matter? We’ve already seen mass hysteria in disaster films - it’s never particularly interesting. But here we get to see a small group of people dissolve right before our eyes. They’re literally crushed by forces beyond their control, which reminds us of how precarious our own lives are. We have far less control than we think.

The only thing that keeps this film from greatness is the abysmal first half. von Trier doesn’t have to pander to his audience but some measure of likeability in his characters would have given it a bigger jolt at the end. Or not even likeability - I just need a better understanding of the characters and their actions. A better actor than Dunst would have been welcome too. Although I do have to say that she improves greatly in the second half.

But you can’t help but feel that von Trier is happy that these people are being destroyed. This is great if you’re into schadenfreude, but not so great if you want a deeper emotional resonance.

I admire anyone who attempts to do something different with the horror genre. Say what you will about The Blair Witch Project, I think it’s an excellent film. With a very limited budget, they made a creepy campfire yarn. Then you have The Shining, which is almost an arthouse flick. Anything that gets away from the cheap shocks and familiar beats that hobble the majority of horror films is incredibly welcome.

Which brings me to Antichrist; Lars von Trier’s latest film. Coming from the crazy genius who made Breaking the Waves, The Idiots and Dogville, you’d expect something a little off the beaten track. And he doesn’t disappoint.

The opening sequence is the complete opposite of his Dogma work. Filmed in black and white and in slow motion and with Handel on the soundtrack, it resembles a commercial for a fragrance. It’s achingly beautiful. But then to snap you back to reality and to remind you that you’re watching a von Trier film, you see a couple making love. And then to further ram this point home (literally) you see an erect penis thrusting in and out of a vagina. Filmed in extreme close-up, it’s a rather jarring image, but of course this is what von Trier wants to do – he wants to shock you and to piss you off a little. But this explicit image also helps the scene to get away from clean, sanitised Hollywood sex where there are no cocks, no oral sex and couples have simultaneous orgasms after 90 seconds of intercourse. It reminds you that this is an animalistic act.

The scene also shows that sex is a selfish, self-absorbed act – caught up in its fire, everything else gets relegated to the background. And so as the couple make love, their young child manages to climb to a window and falls out. The mother even climaxes as the child is dying. The way it’s juxtaposed, it kind of suggests that sex equals death – that something dies when you make love. I’m sure this is true for some poor bastards but it certainly doesn’t apply to the majority of the population.

Apparently von Trier was heavily depressed when making this film and when the child accidentally (or maybe not accidentally – the way its filmed it looks like a suicide, even though the child here is a toddler) kills himself, he inadvertently knocks three figures to the floor. One has ‘Pain’ written on it, the other one has ‘Grief’ and the final one says ‘Despair’. This is what the child is freeing himself from at such an early age. It’s also what he’s inflicting upon his parents. Maybe the depressed von Trier also wishes he could be liberated from these feelings.

What follows is a war between the sexes. The man, played by Willem Dafoe, is a therapist and wants to understand his wife’s feelings (the wife is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg). They almost immediately begin clashing, the wife saying that only now does she interest him. Before this horrible tragedy occurred he’d been a distant figure in her life – he paid little to no attention to her or their son. But whether this is the case or not, both of them express their grief in different ways. Dafoe throws himself into understanding his wife and the woman, quite understandably, becomes a nervous wreck. But although the ranting and raving would suggest that Gainsbourg’s character is more deeply affected by the child’s death, this isn’t true. Dafoe does the typically male thing of throwing himself into his work in order to suppress his feelings.

This ‘work’ involves Dafoe taking his wife to Eden, their log cabin in the woods – he discovers that she’s terrified of the forest and decides to treat her with exposure therapy. The scenes where we see how the wife feels about Eden are magnificently filmed. They’re hyper real and almost painterly – the woods look terrifying, but beautifully so. Contrast this with the scene where the characters actually travel to Eden. Here the woods look dull and uninteresting. It’s a very imaginative and successful way of showing how we build things up in our mind.

Once the film gets to the cabin itself it enters Strindberg territory, with the couple continually jousting. Unfortunately, though, von Trier is no Strindberg and some of the exchanges are clumsy or just plain bad. A line that had me wincing was when Gainsbourg says the following: ‘You shouldn’t have come here. You’re just so damn arrogant.’ With Gainsbourg’s weedy, lifeless voice (I haven’t heard her sing, so I hope her singing voice has more conviction) the line lands with a conspicuous thud. And things like ‘Nature is Satan’s church’ sound sub-Herzog.

The film is more successful when it expresses itself visually. There’s a graphic shot of a deer giving birth and a jarring image of a bird being consumed. And then later there’s a bit where a fox talks to Dafoe. On paper it sounds ridiculous, but the CGI is easily some of the best I’ve seen for a long time.

Whether Antichrist has anything meaningful to say about male/female relationships is hard to say. There’s so much symbolism and the characters behave so irrationally that you have to wonder whether this is just von Trier screaming wildly into the abyss or he’s simply having a laugh. Either way, the film, for me, is a success because of the insanity of the piece, not because it spoke personally to me.

One of Antichrist’s themes is the nature of women. In the film, Gainsbourg’s character writes a thesis to denounce the treatment of women across the ages but eventually proves that women are evil. And Gainsbourg’s character, in the final act, degenerates into psychopathic hysteria. At one point she decides that Dafoe is leaving her and so she then gets him excited, begins fucking him and dismounts so that she can smash him in the groin with a huge piece of wood. He passes out but he’s still aroused, and so in graphic detail we get to see her wank him off and make him come while he’s unconscious – the cherry on the cake is that he ejaculates blood.

Following this, the wife attaches a grindstone to Dafoe’s leg by bolting it to his ankle. You see what these sneaky women do; they hobble us and weigh us down! And then in a hilarious scene Dafoe crawls into a foxhole as his wife tries to dig her way into it with a spade while screaming, ‘How dare you leave me!’ Damn possessive women. If they can’t have us, they’ll destroy us. Oh, and she storms about bottomless. Fear the cunt.

Worse follows. We find out that Gainsbourg’s character was fully aware that their child was roaming about while they were making love. And we even find out that she made the child wear his shoes back to front, thus beginning to deform him. As a result of all of this, we get a close-up of Gainsbourg cutting her clitoris off with some scissors. Enjoyment of sex has apparently brought her nothing but misery and she no longer wants any part of it.

Dafoe manages to remove the grindstone from his leg and strangles her to death before burning her body like the witch she is. Again, I have no idea if von Trier is having a laugh or if he’s seriously suggesting that men would be better off burning their women.

The final image of the film is of loads of faceless women streaming past Dafoe and entering the woods. Oh no, there are more of them! And they’re all the same! This faceless evil is neverending! Mothers and wives just keep on coming!

Despite this, it would be a mistake to interpret Antichrist as a misogynistic film. Defoe’s character initiates the scenario that creates this meltdown. Rather than let his wife manage her grief and provide quiet understanding, he bullies her into accepting his therapy. He dominates her at every turn until she finally snaps. Consequently the film is more misanthropic than misogynistic.

But if you want to cling onto the interpretation that Antichrist is anti-women, there’s a Charlotte Gainsbourg quote you should remember: ‘A crying woman is a scheming woman.'

So, several months after the project started we come to the highly anti-climatic conclusion of my Films of the Decade project. Here's my overall Top 20:

20. American Psycho


Favourite scene: Patrick Bateman gives a speech about Whitney Houston as he encourages a couple of women to make out on a sofa. With tears in his eyes he speaks about the greater meaning of Whitney’s music and how important it is to empathise with other people and one’s self. We then have a jump cut to him vigorously fucking the women and then killing them. It’s very funny and shows the complete disconnect that exists in Bateman’s character. He can regurgitate all this nonsense about Phil Collins and Whitney Houston but the reality is that he has nothing but contempt for the people around him – he may speak with emotion and he might talk about how important it is to empathise with other people, but this is just stuff that he’s read; in reality he wants to destroy everything.

19. The Lives of Others


Favourite scene: Having become seduced by an artist couple while performing surveillance on them, a Stasi officer encounters the actress half of the couple and chats with her in a bar. She has no idea who he is, thinking he’s just a fan, but he manages to give her the resolve to stop an affair she’s having with a high ranking minister. The scene that follows shows the officer relieving his subordinate from duty and reading the report of what happened during the night. The actress returns to her writer lover and they make passionate love. It’s very romantically filmed and you can see the joy that the report gives the officer – for once, rather than have a destructive effect on someone’s life, he’s doing something positive. He even manages to overlook his subordinate sleeping and praises him for a good report.

18. Audition


Favourite scene: When you give your heart to someone, there’s always the fear that the other person will hurt you. But what happens in Audition takes this fear to the extreme. A widower ends up being tortured by a prospective bride. Her reason for doing this? To prove what is feels like to need someone. It’s a very tough scene to watch but with Miike very slowly winding the tension tighter and tighter, it’s almost a release. The need to possess her ‘love’ is far too much for this woman – she doesn’t just want love, she wants full ownership and devotion; she’s willing to disable the object of her affection to make him totally dependant and subservient.

17. Memento


Favourite scene: Lenny finally hears the truth of his quest to find his wife’s killer and learns that, thanks to his memory disorder, he’s been manipulated by his friend Teddy. Apparently he found his wife’s killer a long time ago but because of his condition he doesn’t remember it. Since then Teddy has been giving him puzzle after puzzle to solve in order to give meaning to Lenny’s life. In a moment of quiet rage, Lenny sabotages his quest and sets Teddy up as his next target. The film ends with Lenny forgetting the fact that he’s set up his friend, ready to begin the investigation that will inevitably end with Teddy’s death. The scene brilliantly explains everything that has been going on, but more than that it shows human fallibility. We may think that we can overcome anything and build perfect systems that will help us achieve our goal, but we’re still slaves to our emotions. Rationality will rarely win over anger. And it’s also true that people often lie to themselves in order to be happy. This scene just elevates it to a grand scale.

16. Grizzly Man


Favourite scene: Timothy Treadwell is filming a grizzly bear when a couple of foxes run into the shot. One of the foxes then goes up to him and smells his finger. It’s a little moment but it shows why Treadwell became so obsessed with living in the wilderness. These animals give him the companionship he didn’t get in the city. They also give him (in his mind) unconditional love and they definitely protect him from his demons. They prove to be his saviours and the cause of his destruction.

15. No Country For Old Men


Favourite scene: The Coens manage to produce a shoot-out that is several times more exciting than anything that the best action directors managed to film. Shot at night and not accompanied by a score, the two lead characters face off against each other in a Texas street. For all intents and purposes, this is like something out of a Western. The evil man in black stalks the hero and the good guy turns the tables to bring on the pain. But with an innocent driver getting shot in his throat and with the sight of two men having a gun battle in the middle of a deserted street in a populated town, the action scene ends up having an abstract quality. Both men are both hunter and hunted, and in the end they fight to a stalemate. In the mindless pursuit of money, no one wins.

14. Downfall


Favourite scene: With the Soviet troops rapidly approaching Berlin, Frau Goebbels poisons all of her children. She and a doctor pretend that it’s ‘medicine’ and all but one of the children happily gulps the stuff down, but one child knows what’s going on and resists. Frau Goebbels and the Doctor then force her to drink it. The most disturbing thing about the scene is the normality of it – you really would think that the woman was giving them medicine; she’s like a rock. It’s only when the final child resists that she seems a little rattled. And there’s also a moment when we see her put a book of fairytales to the side; these kids have read their final bedtime story – they don’t need the book any more. But again to the disturbing normality of the scene – another thing that makes the scene difficult to watch is the kindness present in it. Millions of other people weren’t shown this same kindness in their final moments – they were treated like vermin. So in a way you should rejoice at this extermination of Nazism and the seeds of its evil, but there’s no joy to be taken from this act.

13. Auto Focus


Favourite scene: Bob Crane and his best pal ‘Carpy’ have a discussion about how unreasonable women are while they both masturbate to their homemade porn. Funny, melancholic and pathetic, the scene encapsulates everything about these guys – their desire to orgasm at the drop of a hat eclipses any need for a deep, fulfilling relationship. They’re clueless teenage boys trapped in the bodies of men.

12. Munich


Favourite scene: The first assassination. Proving just how hard it is to kill someone, the Mossad agents fumble and hesitate and then almost close their eyes when they finally pull the trigger. Their target then falls in a heap and lands on some bottles of milk which spills across the floor with his blood. It’s a quick, brutal scene, but it beautifully sets up the film – that revenge isn’t clear cut; it’s brutal and messy.

11. Zodiac


Favourite scene: A relatively innocent July 4th drive turns into a bloodbath when a couple of kids stumble upon the Zodiac killer. At the tail end of the sixties it signals the end of the era of peace and love. A new darker era is being ushered in and America is very quickly losing what innocence it had. The killing is filmed in minute detail and the choice of ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ on the soundtrack is perfect.

10. Gomorrah


Favourite scene: A couple of wannabe gangsters play about with stolen weapons as they piss about in some marshland. Wearing nothing but speedos, they fire machine guns and rocket launchers. Drunk on violent movies and the violence that surrounds them in the slums, this is their idea of masculinity. Nothing is tougher or more fearsome than a man firing an AK-47 in his underoos. Needless to say that despite the heavy crimes these teenagers commit, they have the minds of young children.

9. In the Loop


Favourite scene: There are certainly more intelligent scenes in this amazing film, but nothing gave me as much pleasure as Malcolm Tucker bullying a minister and his staff. Best line: ‘Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your shitter with a lubricated horse cock!’

8. Touching the Void


Favourite scene: With a broken leg, Joe Simpson falls into a crevasse. Stuck in a hole and filled with impotent rage, he screams every swear word he knows. Simpson then explains that despite his dire situation he never prayed to god. The fact that the man never asked a higher power for help and that he didn’t just crawl up and die is a huge inspiration.

7. Dogville


Favourite scene: With blossom falling, Grace and Tom confess their love for one another. It seems that their blooming romance has come to fruition. And yet Tom, being the colossal coward that he is, can’t bring himself to kiss Grace. We then have a dinner where one of the townsfolk of Dogville thanks Grace for showing the town who she is. You’d think that nothing but bright skies would follow, but under the surface everything isn’t quite so rosy. Grace might have shown the town who she is, but she’s also shown the town who they are. She’s seen right through them, and although they thank her for this, they grow to hate the mirror she’s shone upon them. The scene wonderfully captures the polite façade and the hatred and hypocrisy that can lie beneath it.

6. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring


Favourite scene: The best scene in the Lord of the Rings trilogy actually comes at the very beginning. The film opens with a dizzying prologue that beautifully and economically tells us the history of Middle Earth and explains what’s at stake in the story that follows. In particular I love the image of Gollum in the cave, allowing the ring to consume him for years and years.

5. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World


Favourite scene: When Doctor Maturin accidentally gets shot, Captain Jack Aubery temporarily ends his pursuit of the French ship Acheron. Yes he has the ship in his sights but he ends up putting his friend before duty. He ends up taking him to land so that surgery can be performed. Of course with both of them being British males, they can’t verbalise the depth of feeling they have for each other. Jack says that this detour hasn’t been taken on the Doctor’s account. He says that he needs to stretch his legs. But both know that this is an act of friendship. This scene helps give a wonderful adventure film an added dimension – the characters aren’t just meat to be blown up and sliced to bits; they’re people that we come to care about.

4. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer


Favourite scene: Grenouille’s first encounter with Laura - with his superior olfactory senses, he smells her long before he sees her. Immediately enraptured, he hides from the road as she passes in a horse and carriage. But then like a dog he follows her to her father’s mansion and hides in the garden, drinking her in. The scene is wonderfully scored and hopelessly romantic but it’s also filled with dread – you know that nothing good is going to come of this and that death is waiting around the corner.

3. There Will Be Blood


Favourite scene: Daniel Plainview finally strikes oil but his ‘son’ gets injured as a result. However, his injured boy concerns him little. As it is, his family is just an artifice – it’s just a way of masking his greed and making it more palatable to the masses. The most telling moment is when he’s looking at the burning oil. A colleague asks him if his son is okay and he casually replies that he isn’t. You can almost see the dollar signs in Plainview’s eyes – he doesn’t give a shit about the boy; the money is everything.

2. United 93


Favourite scene: Cutting through the simplistic jingoistic ‘Let’s roll’ bullshit like a knife, the final scene shows the passenger revolt for what it was: a desperate, violent last ditch fight for survival. These are people placed in a horrible situation desperately clawing at their tormentors as they try and regain control of the plane and their lives. But both sides are spinning out of control and mutual destruction is the only possible result. Knowing exactly what’s going to happen to these people only makes everything that more powerful; the desperate way that they try and push the pilot into the cockpit, in particular, never fails to get to me.

1. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford


Favourite scene: The final moments are amazing. Finally realising the hollowness of his celebrity, Robert Ford is left to live a disappointing existence. No one really likes him and he misses his old friend. All that’s left is for him is to read hate mail and hang out in his saloon. The melancholy of this is magnificently captured and fate eventually catches up with Robert Ford. Considering what Ford did prior to this, this killing, in lesser hands, might have resembled someone getting their just desserts. But there’s no feeling of victory with this murder. It’s empty and it’s sad, and just as Ford is finally coming to terms with his act and just as he’s understanding how rotten it was, his life is taken away from him. But what makes the scene even more powerful is how resigned he is to his killing, like he knows it’s just around the corner. He almost embraces it.

I find it quite amusing that so many Americans were outraged that Lars von Trier had the temerity to criticise their country without having visited it. We do it all the time, don't we? Millions of us are quite content to sit on our sofas and criticise China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Israel and countless other countries without having visited their shores. And we're perfectly justified in doing so. So why should von Trier be vilified for criticising America from a few thousand miles away?

Well, of course, I don't think he should. He's perfectly entitled to his opinion, and those that cry and moan are symptomatic of America's biggest problem – its inability to take criticism without getting its pants in a twist. Surely every great country should thrive on criticism. It should help it grow and develop. But instead America seems to resemble a child sometimes, spouting unhelpful phrases like, "America: love it or leave it" or, "You're either with us or against us." Therefore a film like Dogville, one that refuses to revel in the hollow American Dream, is vital, and it's a film that should be embraced, not shunned.

What the detractors seem to overlook is the fact that Dogville could really be a small town anywhere. It may be the first part in an American trilogy, but the small town values with their prejudices and hypocrisy are universal; they're not exclusive to any one country. Everyone can relate.

The film begins and ends with a God's eye view of the proceedings and it isn't hard to imagine that von Trier is looking down on the characters, judging them. In fact, as Tom (Paul Bettany) himself says, everything is a game, a test, and von Trier is the one pulling the strings.

The game begins when Grace enters the town. The townsfolk are frightened, but Tom thinks it's a gift. He wants to see if Dogville has a problem with acceptance. At the beginning, the citizens are understandably cautious, but they're eventually placated when Grace proves that she can help them out. And so at the beginning she develops a good relationship with the town and its citizens. But even at the beginning the relationship is far from equal. She may like everyone, but she's essential a slave. Yet the townsfolk like her best like this, when she's happily subservient.

As the film progresses, the town is tested further. The police post wanted posters and accuse Grace of crimes that she couldn't have committed (as she was in the town at the time of the reported incidents). But rather than bring everyone together, the town gets cold feet. It wants to help, but only as long as it doesn't put them at risk. Therefore they decide to doubly enslave Grace to make themselves feel better. It's an extraordinary move, but one that is anything but far-fetched. Individuals are brave, but people have a worrying habit of proving themselves to be spineless.

And seeing as Grace affects the status quo, the townsfolk decide to take their frustrations out on her. The men rape her physically and the women rape her psychologically. In fact, the most upsetting scene isn't one of the numerous rape scenes – although Chuck's rape scene does prove the brilliance of the set, what with it showing everyone going about their daily business and turning a blind eye to what is going on - it is instead the womens' abuse of Grace and the destruction of her figurines. It's more than just a physical violation. It's a violation of everything. Her dreams are being smashed right before her eyes.

But why do the people of Dogville react this way? Surely their behaviour is an exaggeration. Well, it is and it isn't. Of course the film paints a bleak portrait of human nature that you might not find down your street, but I think that the film proves that we all have darkness present in us. It only takes the right conditions and the right buttons to be pressed for it to emerge. In the case of Dogville, it emerges for many reasons, but I think the main reason is because Grace shows everyone what they are. Before her arrival, everyone is happily stuck in a rut, but once she arrives everything changes. Everyone is faced with their mediocrity and everyone's lies are exposed. In one scene, McKay (Ben Gazzara), after having finally admitted his blindness, indeed thanks Grace for "showing us who you are", but during her time in Dogville she also forces Bill to realise his stupidity (by playing checkers for him), Liz her unattractiveness (by catching Tom's eye), Ben his loneliness (by providing for him), Chuck and Vera their unhappy marriage (by catching Chuck's eye) and Tom his cowardice (through his refusal to kiss her even though she's admitted her love for him). Needless to say, not everyone likes being exposed. It's hard to face yourself when you don't like what you see. And therefore the person that you're going to punish is the one that made you gaze at your reflection.

The ending is certainly bleak, but I think it forces us to take a hard look at ourselves. How often have we taken advantage of other people when we should have helped? How often have our intentions been selfish? And Grace's final actions suggest one thing to me: if you treat someone like an animal, you shouldn't be surprised when they treat you like one too.