The Idiots (1998)

. It’s without a doubt a provoking concept for a film, as we viewers laugh at the pranks pulled at the beginning, cringe at the crew’s deliberate social experiments halfway and then later compel us to recheck society’s inherent revulsion to anything abnormal. Von Trier seems determined to suggest the poser here, what is normality? In the freewheeling attempts of the group, we see a dark mirror of the bourgeois superiority complex, patronising those that commit unruly social behaviours whilst this pack of anarchists feel much more superior about their actions in return. Normality is this group’s number one enemy, as they all disregard etiquette and common decency, shredding clothes in public and even an explicit gang-bang sex with full-on, brief, upfront, pornographic penetration. Don’t watch this with your puritanical grandma, she might die of heart attack. All of this is observed using scattershot camera, with a fragmented storyline that that shifts gear from one situation to the next, conveying a pseudo-reality show feel. But the laughs completely dissipate when the band is visited by Down’s Syndrome patients, where the leader of the pack, charismatic yet nihilistic Stoffer, is appalled by the genuine innocence and twitchiness of the patients – a reaction that turns out exactly akin to those oblivious people they take the piss on. From then on, the foundation soon starts to crumble, and they begin to question themselves and their purpose. That they’re nothing more but a group of social misfits who couldn’t function in the so-called normal environment, and their spassing is their way to be involved in something, to be noticed, even in sheer disgust.

The Idiots, despite a difficult viewing experience, reveals some devastating truths and emotional cruelty of humanity, themes that would recur in many of von Trier’s later works, most especially Dogville and Dancer in the Dark, in which the films’ heroines are subjected to forms of social and psychological punishments. And here, we witness this in Karen, the newest member of the gang, whose transformation from a shy middle-aged wallflower to a willing saviour of the group’s final degeneration by volunteering to ‘spass’ in household environment is developed to a heart-wrenching effect. There’s a riveting final shot that will have you either fuming in anger or sobbing your eyes between your clenched hands, depending on your emotional capacity.