The Idiots

This 1998 Lars von Trier film was his first offering in the Dogma 95 school of cinema purity that he helped espouse (its concession to that movement is cinematography that seems to have been shot by an idiot), and it has garnered a reputation for awfulness that's not entirely deserved. A bunch of bourgeois malcontents form a group whose idea of rebellion is to act moronically in public (hey, haven't they watched American daytime TV?) -- they "spass" like "retards." Unfortunately, their antics can't match those of an average sixth-grader let loose in a cafeteria, and their philosophy of anti-conformity and anti-sentimentality proves the height of sentimental conformity. Although some characters and scenes verge on poignancy and humor -- the one genuine laugh comes when one of the idiots gets the tables turned in a key meeting at his advertising agency -- the film confuses purifying stupidity with tiresome banality. For a real sample of the redeeming power of human extremity, of the divine idiot within us all, see Trier's own Breaking the Waves. Better yet, rent The Three Amigos.

-- Peter Keough