This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labour of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn't exist.
It's the film that infamously caused Mark Kermode's ejection from Cannes Film Festival after the critic, so overcome with revulsion by what he was watching, stood up and made repeated cries at the screen of “Il est merde!” 25 years later, The Idiots (aka Idioterne or Dogme #2) is back in cinemas for the month of August as part of Lars Von Trier: Enduring Provocations, a retrospective of the Danish filmmaker's radical and boundary-breaking career. In an age where artistic consumption is becoming increasingly morally defined, is The Idiots, a film deemed hideously offensive by many upon its release, able to resonate with audiences today? Or will viewers be joining Kermode in exclamations of French profanity?
The Idiots follows a group of men and women whose collective goal is to release their inhibitions and rebel against the rigid social expectations of the bourgeoisie by letting out what they refer to as their “inner idiots”. This practice involves going out in public and acting as if they are development disabled, a practice they refer to as “spassing”. It's evident why many viewers have condemned this film. The subject matter, in true Von Trier fashion, is undeniably offensive and makes for uncomfortable, confronting viewing. However, a filmmaker's depiction of a subject matter or behaviour does not necessarily equate to their validation or endorsement of it. In the case of The Idiots, Von Trier's representation of the group and their way of life consistently undermines and exposes the participants and their flimsy, hypocritical, and contradictory justifications for acting the way they choose to.

We experience the contemptible lifestyle of the clique through the eyes of newcomer Karen (Bodil Jørgensen), whose role, in part, is as an on-screen manifestation of the viewer and our internal monologue. “Why do they do it?” Karen asks on her second outing with the group. Stoffer (Jens Albius), the self-appointed leader, responds with another question: “What's the idea of a society that gets richer and richer if it doesn't make anyone happier?”
The Idiots is the second cinematic output of the Dogme 95 movement, the avant-garde filmmaking wave of the late 1990s to early 2000s that grew out of a manifesto penned by Von Trier and fellow Danish director Thomas Vinterberg. The manifesto involved such specifications as purely hand-held camera usage, on-location shooting and no special lighting, non-diegetic music, or special effects. It was an effort to restore purity to the filmmaking process and the style lends itself perfectly to the subject matter of The Idiots. The breathtaking slow-motion tableaux vivant found in later Von Trier films like Melancholia, Antichrist, and The House That Jack Built would have felt incredibly out of place and problematic, even. The beauty, or lack thereof, of the Dogme 95 style is that it refuses to glamorise or advocate for the actions of the characters, instead depicting them in their most raw and vulnerable state, with little to no technical remediation. While puritanical in its dedication to the terms of the Dogme 95 manifesto, Von Trier's filmmaking is deliberately imperfect, the shaky handheld camera movements and intrusion of the boom mic in certain scenes lends The Idiots the aura of a documentary and make us feel like Karen, as if we are intruding on something which we perhaps shouldn't be.
It's this dramatic irony that generates the film's darkly comedic edge. As we watch members of the group act out in public, often exposing the underlying prejudices of those around them, we are let in on the secret. The most hilariously cringe-inducing moment of public debauchery occurs when Jeppe (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is left alone in a bar with a group of burly, heavily tattooed bikers. His apparent inability to communicate culminates in an excruciating scene where two of the muscled men are, with all the best of intentions, trying to assist Jeppe with going to the toilet.

To label The Idiots as controversial or offensive would be to state the obvious. Lars Von Trier is one of cinema's ultimate provocateurs; he believes that films shouldn't feel safe or comfortable, rather that they “should be like a stone in your shoe”. The Idiots is the ultimate testament to that. Yes, the actions of the characters are utterly condemnable, but that's the point. One of the film's most important scenes comes when some individuals with Down's syndrome join Stoffer and company at their house for lunch. The cracks begin to show as we watch the group squirm in the presence of those actually living with the different abilities that they're mocking. Even after the guests have left the house, there's a new reluctance in the group to return to their state of so-called “spassing”.
Watching this film twenty-five years on in an era of (rightfully) more morally-focused filmmaking, particularly when it comes to able actors portraying differently abled people (Maddie Ziegler's performance as an autistic teenager in Sia's Music was universally criticised) raises some interesting moral quandaries regarding the viewer's potentially hypocritical comfortability. Many actors in years prior have received widespread praise for their depiction of individuals with developmental disabilities, such as Leonardo DiCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? or Sean Penn in I Am Sam or more recently, Benny Safdie in Good Time. If the performance of disability by the characters in The Idiots makes you uncomfortable, then Von Trier is asking you where exactly you draw the line.
The influence of The Idiots and its Dogme 95 peers is still felt keenly today. Its then-groundbreaking technical approach has trickled down to become a habitual element of modern cinematography, a notable recent example of which would be TV's Succession, which uses a more polished iteration of the documentary-like style of filming with quick pans and rapid zooms that induce a greater sense of realism for the viewer. The Dogme style, however, is simultaneously The Idiots‘ greatest strength and greatest weakness. While it imbues its best scenes with rawness and viscerality, it can often make the experimental film feel more like an experiment than an actual film. When freewheeling between scenes, you find yourself searching for something more tangible to hold onto, particularly in moments when the touchstone character of Karen is shrinking into the background or absent altogether.
The Idiots will be re-released in UK cinemas on August 18th.