Members and various penetrations

‘I’ve reached for the dictaphone in a humble attempt to keep up the diary. I’ll say that I’m in a pretty good mood today and the weather’s wonderful and we’ve got the kids and yes, I’m pretty keen . . . What else can I say? We’ve discussed with great enthusiasm the necessity of including several erect members and various penetrations in the film.’ This is from a film diary kept by the provocative Danish film director Lars von Trier - who turns 70 today - while making The Idiots.

Von Trier was born on 30 April 1956 in Copenhagen. He was raised in an unconventional, secular household by parents with strong left-wing views. As a child actor in the late-1960s, he had made his debut working on the Danish television series Secret Summer. Only in adulthood, biographies say, did he discover that the man who had raised him was not his biological father. He studied at the National Film School of Denmark, graduating in 1983. 

Von Trier’s career developed through formally experimental and often controversial films. Early features include The Element of Crime (1984) and Europa (1991). In 1995 he co-founded the Dogme 95 manifesto with Thomas Vinterberg, advocating stripped-down filmmaking methods. His major works include Breaking the Waves (1996), The Idiots (1998), Dancer in the Dark (2000), Dogville (2003), Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011), and The House That Jack Built (2018). His films have been repeatedly selected for the Cannes Film Festival, where Dancer in the Dark won the Palme d’Or.

Von Trier has married twice, first to Cæcilia Holbek and later to Bente Frøge, with whom he has four children. He has spoken publicly about long periods of depression, anxiety and phobias, including a fear of flying that has shaped his working practices. In recent years he has continued to direct, including the television continuation of The Kingdom (2022), while also being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which he announced in 2022.

While not in the habit of keeping a diary, he did keep notes during the production of The Idiots, recorded on a dictaphone from pre-production through editing. He described it as ‘a kind of diary’ made without revision, consisting of spontaneous, unprepared reflections shaped by the emotional intensity of the shoot. The text itself acknowledges that it contains inaccuracies and should be read as a form of ‘self-therapy’, reflecting both the Dogme 95 method and the psychological conditions under which the film was made. This material was published in Danish in 1998 by Gyldendal alongside the screenplay (Dogme #2: Idioterne: manuskript og dagbog), combining script and diary into a single production document. The diary is therefore inseparable from the film’s conception and execution, documenting technical decisions, creative uncertainties and fluctuating emotional states during filming. 

A few extracts from this diary have been translated into English and published online by Peter Holm Jensen for his blog, Notes from a Room. Here are few extracts.

From Von Trier’s Preface

‘Without otherwise disavowing the text, I will merely note that all statements are unprepared and thus spontaneous. Since both the factual and analytical information probably contain quite a few inaccuracies (not to say untruths), it is advisable to read the text as a kind of self-therapy on the part of the author, born out of the agitated emotional state that was the very technique of the film.’

19 May 1997

‘It’s the 29th of May and there’s a kind of calm before the storm as far as Dogma is concerned. I can’t really pull myself together to do anything. I’ve thought a bit about the music, about finding some simple, childlike piece of classical music that can be played on the Pianola - at last free from rights. And I’ve talked about the sound with Per Streit, who’s the sound engineer, and impressed on him the importance of each camera having a separate track, in accordance with the Dogma rules. Apart from that, we talked about the fact that it’s actually pretty inspiring to have to decide on location whether a scene is going to be silent, or what the sound in general will be like in the finished film. We talked about recording some sounds on location that you’d normally create later on - these rules give you a very pure way of thinking. On Monday I start working with the actors.

I went canoeing yesterday and was attacked by an angry swan that sort of dived down towards me and finally boarded the canoe by jumping into the back of it. It was almost as if it was trying to capsize it, and of course I tried to retaliate with aggression. This was clearly unwise, but at least I got out of it all right. Maybe it was something of a symbolic meeting: if you see the swan as the actors and me in my unstable little canoe with my ass in the water . . . well, we’ll see what happens. But I must admit I’ve got a lot of confidence in it at the moment. To stay in the symbolic realm, wasn’t there something about Zeus being a swan when he impregnated Leda, who incidentally was a goose at that point. Well, there’s something to think about.’

7 June 1997

‘Today is the 7th of June and we’ve just had a week with the actors, sometimes one at a time, sometimes more . . . People have more or less started to spazz, and it actually looks better than I thought it would, I must admit. The actors have been to a home or a workshop and are now being further briefed at various hospitals or whatever we can find.

I’ve reached for the dictaphone in a humble attempt to keep up the diary. I’ll say that I’m in a pretty good mood today and the weather’s wonderful and we’ve got the kids and yes, I’m pretty keen . . . What else can I say? We’ve discussed with great enthusiasm the necessity of including several erect members and various penetrations in the film. We’ve discussed several solutions, as a last resort getting some of Trine Michelsen’s friends from the harder part of the industry to supply the close-ups. Everyone seems to be taking this side of things with relatively good humour, which of course is fantastic. On the whole, I have to say everything is pretty merry at the moment.

We were at the villa for the first time the day before yesterday with Jens Albinus and Bodil and Anne Louise. Everyone was glad to see the place. The advantage of having a place like that is of course that it becomes a kind of home, and everyone was happy and thought ‘this is where we live’ and ‘oh look, here’s a little room, and here…’ It’s exactly like moving into a house you’re going to live in, and I think it’s very good for the communal idea to have a place like that. It … well, it makes me very happy.

I’ve more or less abstained from dissecting my shit. The only disheartening thing is that I’ve now started looking for tumours in my scrotum …  I’ve sort of stopped now, but it’s been a pretty agonizing time. Now I’m running a bath for little Agnes. And Bente is getting enormous.’

10 June 1987

‘The 10th of June. We had the first actors’ day in the villa yesterday, and it was very good. Everyone got a chance to say what they knew about their character. It worked sort of theatrically and I sense a lot of enthusiasm … Bodil, who’s playing Karen, of course started crying when she was telling the whole group about her character. They’re all identifying with their characters to such an extent that it almost shines through stronger in the private sphere. It’s all exciting and invigorating and encouraging, so… yes, I’m looking forward to this with great pleasure. You can’t avoid feeling very closely connected to kindergarten teachers and the like.’