EuropaIn the wake of World War II, German businesses--like railway company, Zentropa--are making efforts to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and recover in the post-war climate. Young emigre Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr) takes a job as a sleeping car conductor under the stern apprenticeship of his uncle (Ernst-Hugo Järegård). Soon after, he becomes the object of affection for Zentropa inheritress and femme fatale, Katharina Hartmann (Barbara Sukowa), and the two begin a relationship that is founded on her proclaimed need for sympathy, but one that is spun into a deadly web of conspiracy.
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Would that the aforementioned synopsis was the whole of Europa, it would make for a reasonably exciting yarn. But Europa is more about style and tone than plot; not to dismiss the plot, but the story is in large part a means to an end. And what is that end? For the remarkably talented, enfant terrible filmmaker Lars von Trier, the film is like the reanimated corpse of Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, or another equivalent, something that hearkens back to that era, a musical score boiling over with roaring strings, like Bernard Herrmann in the thrall of a dreamlike fugue. Varied back-projected scenes that twist and change are not done exclusively for the technical showmanship of it alone, but to create a distorted world, a netherworld that Leo is thrust into, one that does not feel real--and probably is not to begin with. The fabricated sets and plot invoke an artificiality that is intentionally derivative. The result is an electrifying mix of both black comedy and melodrama, both satirical and earnestly embracing the presentation of films from the Forties, about the war and following it, like a child dressing up in his grandfather's uniform, but wielding a very real Luger. The music is played with sentimentality, and accompanies grandiose gestures, such as a train being dragged along the tracks by men with ropes, as a moon behind Leo seems to grow impossibly big, or a model train set shown later which is treated with an overflow of metaphor. And there is something unnervingly absurd about a scene describing the significance of a chalk mark on the sole of a shoe following a dramatic suicide. The beginning of the film is a hypnotic spell crafted upon us--the viewers--by the commanding voice of our narrator/hypnotist, voiced by Max von Sydow. It is made clear from the start that through this hypnosis, we are interposed into (late) 1945 Germany; so where were we before this? Does it matter? Maybe, since what we could be experiencing is some kind of "otherworld" of Leo's at all, and not the "real" post-WWII, but a shadow of it. We're here in this surreal nachtmahr, where the sun never shines, where color only occasionally bleeds (yes, bleeds) through, that rare tease of heightened awareness, and there is no easy exit, no comprehensive emergency brake. The symbolism of Leopold Kessler's fee-ridden employment as a sleeping car conductor is humorous, given the soporific feel of Europa, which is intentionally hyper-stylized, blending both vivid and impossible shot composition and the illusion of antiquated, stylistic conventions, like the product of a dream. The dialogue is mannered at times, such as when Katharina addresses Leo as "Mr. Kessler" as she disrobes to seduce him, while confessing her secrets to him. This is hardly the fashion of a traditional seduction, but one which would only be plausible in a dream, or even a nightmare. Barbara Sukowa stands out as the icy love interest for Leo, like the second coming of Marlene Dietrich, plying his sympathies for Germany to recruit him to her ideologies in a sideways manner, reminiscent of Dietrich in Judgment at Nuremberg.
Leo's job on Zentropa and his relations with the Hartmann family pull him in different directions, and the strain of the absurd, Kafka-esque mannerisms of his employers and the moral manipulations outside his work leave his convictions challenged. And just what are Leo's convictions? Well, they aren't the convictions of the world he now inhabits. For the world of Europa is haunted by werewolves--not literal ones, but the name adopted by the partisan vestiges of the Nazis. Like any terrorist, they cling to the ideologies of patriotism and paint themselves as resisting an occupation. But in this warped landscape of rubble and poverty, the American military does not appear much more sympathetic, destroying cranes to keep the country underfoot, and dispersing benign funerals conducted in secret. And the Nazi undertones are uncomfortably pointed, as Zentropa is later revealed to have previously been complicit in transporting Jews to concentration camps, now transporting American military across the country. The staff--especially the assessors at the end who test Leo on his job--are portrayed as absurd clowns, black comedy indeed, as their outfits bear more than a passing resemblance to SS uniforms. (It's not so easy to drop a habit once it's been adopted.) The state of things in Germany only looks worse than can be imagined even prior to the end of the war, where the harrowing tribulations such as shootings and assassinations, hangings, and bombings remain and are compounded by bureaucracy and economic devastation; all that has changed are the players in power in this global chess game. Leo is truly a stranger in a strange land, made stranger as he does not want to play out the lethal games of nationalism and extreme conviction, a plague that everyone else in Europa seems stricken with, and he is scolded for not submitting to either of their ideological regimes. And that disdain that the occupants of Europa have for straddling the fence is often reinforced; as we are reminded in the film by the holy pater, "because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I will spew you from my mouth". Germany chews up and spits Leo out; not because he won't take sides as much as that he has a soul intact, and it is slowly ground down under the treads of the inhumanity which is sport here. Another spiritual idiom springs to mind: "When God closes a door, He opens a window." Given Leo's terminus on this line, this rings with bitter irony, and altogether too late.
Recommended for: Fans of both experimental, surreal portrayals of post-WWII Germany, and those who enjoy a tongue-in-cheek melodrama played for black comedy at times, hypnotically haunting fevered dreams at others.
Leo's job on Zentropa and his relations with the Hartmann family pull him in different directions, and the strain of the absurd, Kafka-esque mannerisms of his employers and the moral manipulations outside his work leave his convictions challenged. And just what are Leo's convictions? Well, they aren't the convictions of the world he now inhabits. For the world of Europa is haunted by werewolves--not literal ones, but the name adopted by the partisan vestiges of the Nazis. Like any terrorist, they cling to the ideologies of patriotism and paint themselves as resisting an occupation. But in this warped landscape of rubble and poverty, the American military does not appear much more sympathetic, destroying cranes to keep the country underfoot, and dispersing benign funerals conducted in secret. And the Nazi undertones are uncomfortably pointed, as Zentropa is later revealed to have previously been complicit in transporting Jews to concentration camps, now transporting American military across the country. The staff--especially the assessors at the end who test Leo on his job--are portrayed as absurd clowns, black comedy indeed, as their outfits bear more than a passing resemblance to SS uniforms. (It's not so easy to drop a habit once it's been adopted.) The state of things in Germany only looks worse than can be imagined even prior to the end of the war, where the harrowing tribulations such as shootings and assassinations, hangings, and bombings remain and are compounded by bureaucracy and economic devastation; all that has changed are the players in power in this global chess game. Leo is truly a stranger in a strange land, made stranger as he does not want to play out the lethal games of nationalism and extreme conviction, a plague that everyone else in Europa seems stricken with, and he is scolded for not submitting to either of their ideological regimes. And that disdain that the occupants of Europa have for straddling the fence is often reinforced; as we are reminded in the film by the holy pater, "because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I will spew you from my mouth". Germany chews up and spits Leo out; not because he won't take sides as much as that he has a soul intact, and it is slowly ground down under the treads of the inhumanity which is sport here. Another spiritual idiom springs to mind: "When God closes a door, He opens a window." Given Leo's terminus on this line, this rings with bitter irony, and altogether too late.
Recommended for: Fans of both experimental, surreal portrayals of post-WWII Germany, and those who enjoy a tongue-in-cheek melodrama played for black comedy at times, hypnotically haunting fevered dreams at others.