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The computer has just eaten up Lars' (Lars Von Trier) and Niels' (Niels
Vorsel) script, and now they have only a few days to come up with
something new. And instead of rewriting the old script, they decide to go
ahead with a script about an epidemic that has ravaged the countryside,
with only one doctor, Doctor Mesmer (Lars Von Trier again) trying to help the (dying) populace ... but of course he doesn't know he
was the very one who brought the virus onto the populace in the first
place, when leaving a conference of doctors who wanted to use the virus to
form a new world order, led entirely by medical doctors ...
Somewhere in this script there's also a love story between Mesmer and
his nurse, who eventually gets buried alive but can free herself, and
ultimately, Mesmer ends up in a pit on a pile of those dying or already
dead from the disease ... but he can pull himself out and thanks God.
While writing, Lars
and Niels are doing lots of research, are getting suggestions from a variety of people
(most notably Udo Kier) and are going about their daily routines ... all
the while not noticing though that an epidemic, a rapid form of bulbonic plague,
is actually breaking out as they write ...
When they show their plot outline, a mere 13 pages, to their producer
Claes (Claes Kastholm Hansen) he is less than impressed, as he expected a
full, ready-to-shoot script, and he finds the ending truly underwhelming.
Then Lars And Niels invite a hypnotist and his medium to get into the
film, but the medium, once surrounded by dead and disease, has a nervous
breakdown. Then (in the real world) everybody catches the bulbonic plague
and dies (within seconds) ... and Claes has the sensationalist ending he
has wanted!
The concept of this film is fascinating, contrasting the improvised
scenes in the real world, which have an almost home-movie look to
it, with the highly formalized scenes from the film-within-the-film, which
are somewhat reminiscent of compositions of Carl Theodor Dreyer and the
like. Unfortunately the finished film doesn't always live up to the
promise of its concept: Many of the real world scenes are overlong,
dead-boring and lack any good punchlines - sometimes they don't seem to
have to do anything with the film -, and the whole concept of the epidemic
breaking out in the real world as well as in the film is constantly
underplayed, until the very end, which though seems more like a final joke
than anything else.
Still, the movie, while not Lars Von Trier's best, is worth a look at
least.
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