On the Lousy Conversationalists at Cannes

Lars von Trier’s combined irony and intellectual honesty at Cannes was too much for those less acquainted with European humanism – including the present organisers – when he tried to ridicule his own family background while circumventing standard demonisation of Adolf Hitler. See for yourselves in the video clip available on the BBC site. International media headlines have screamed that the director had praised Hitler (of course), though he simply insisted on some common notion of humanity that had to be shared with even the cruellest murderer in history. Surely anyone familiar with von Trier’s cinematography from Dogville to Breaking the Waves to Antichrist is painfully familiar with the recurrence of his critical eye for the human condition?

This is at the very least his second film in row that apparently won’t get the critical opportunity that it deserves as a piece of art to be, given media and random celebrities with unnecessarily loud and uncontemplative voices. At least all the critiques of Antichrist in the mainstream media that I read were too occupied with violent fetishes – and the recurrent panic – of the reviewers themselves to see the questions posed by the director. A pity.

Though I'm sure von Trier has often enough depicted how apparently good it feels have a fellow human being on his/her/its knees.

That’s what you get when you let entertainers organise what was intended assumedly to be an art festival, and invite politicians and super models as guests. Bonfires of anything that attempts to address our worst fears and sins too honestly will burn all too often, as they always have. Perhaps this is a moment of hope: Art is still dangerous and Europe still retains some of its faculties. It is a fine and optimistic gesture from von Trier to place the judging power on other film directors. Could an artist or a thinker of any merit silence another and live with oneself?

In any event, is it necessary (/possible) for a fine cultural philosophical thinker to be a reliably nice human being?

(image: so that von Trier will know better!)