Nymphomaniac,Volumes I & II. Lars von Trier, 2013.
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Edition screened: Magnolia Extended Director’s Cut 2-Blu-ray set, released 2014. Combined runtime approximately 327 minutes (Volume 1 slightly over 148 minutes; Volume II slightly over 178 minutes).
Summary: A gazelle dies in a leopard’s mouth; a cow is killed by the meat industry.
Details:
1) Volume 1: A leopard holds a gazelle by the throat until dead, 2:16:10-2:16:20. Same footage used again, 2:22:45-2:22:50.
2) Volume 2: A cow is killed with a bolt gun and we see the beginning of its death throes, 1:41:16-1:41:22.
I first watched the short 240-minute version of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac in 2014, and did not revisit it until watching the Extended Director’s Cut nearly a decade later. A dramatically expanded viewing experience was provided, due not so much to the nearly 90 minutes of additional material, but more to my consideration and rewatching of other LvT films since then. I think I got Nympho this time, or at least did not miss it as egregiously.
While Nymphomaniac includes whispers as old as 1994’s The Kingdom, it really walks hand-in-hand with its immediate predecessors, Antichrist (2009) and Melancholia (2011), in ways both more and less difficult, more and less judgmental, than either of those films.
On the lightest side, Nymphomaniac includes a D.S. al coda to John Hurt’s bawdy 18th-century joke about spoons at Melancholia’s wedding reception, explaining the humor clearly this time. We also are teased by a scene of a toddler climbing out of his crib on a snowy evening, almost an outtake from Antichrist.
But like those earlier LvT films and some best works by Antonioni or Bergman, Nympho’s main discussion is the place - or impracticality of place - for overeducated, bored westerners in the contemporary world. Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd and Charlotte Gainsbourg swap the spotlight for monologues throughout the film. She tells graphic stories of her life filled with extreme and violent sexual acts. He then explains that each of her vignettes parallels some aspect of learned culture, pontifications that include J.S. Bach’s alignment with the Fibonacci sequence, symbolism in Eastern Orthodox painted icons, and details about diamond cutting.
Inconsistency between Gainsbourg’s formal education and her intuitive understanding is pointed and fascinating. She understands the cantus firmus of polyphonic composition but has not heard of Edgar Allan Poe. At age fifteen she sits in boredom while her older boyfriend struggles to start his motorcycle, then she silently turns on the fuel petcock and leaves. But thirty years later and after a career in organized crime, she does not understand that the slide of a pistol must be racked before it will fire, a whoopsie that leaves her badly beaten and near death. These inconsistencies are not problems or holes with the film’s writing. They are lessons in complicated writing.
I love the subtlety with which von Trier portrays the fuel petcock scene. It is over in a second, with no commentary or particular focus from the camera. A viewer lacking knowledge of engines might think she is simply wiping a smudge of dirt. This filming technique is a weapon that von Trier wields with deadly precision, but also the same gun he uses to shoot himself in the foot. That one vague second, probably missed or dismissed by most viewers, encapsulates the film’s entire theme, that our formal knowledge and self-knowledge are commingled deceptions, perhaps life-saving, perhaps only good as parlor decorations.
Antichrist is such a complicated mesh of commentary about learning, therapy, lies, abuse, and man’s place in the world, that it nearly is impossible to discuss one isolated strand. Yet I will, because in all my reading about that film, I have seen no mention of the single second that exposes the whole. It is too quick, too subtle, and comes too late for an exhausted audience. Antichrist’s incomparable opening is overwhelming with symbolic objects and eroticism. But to describe the mere plot in one sentence, a child falls to his death from a window because his parents are inattentive while having sex. The remainder of the film addresses concepts of education, magic, abuse, and empowerment. Near the end is a quick return to the opening scene, but these moments we have seen before now also include a quick flicker of comprehension from Gainsbourg as she realizes her son’s situation. And she chooses to do nothing. All the subsequent discussion, grief, accusations, therapy, and revelations are lies. (It is worth a side note that in Nymphomaniac, mother Gainsbourg again elects to say goodbye forever to her toddler son rather than skipping one night’s sexual rendezvous.)
Similarly, now after nearly a decade of public examination and outrage about Nymphomaniac, I see no mention of the quick inclusion that illuminates the whole. Early in the film we get a detail of the cat flap in SkarsgÃ¥rd’s small apartment, swinging slightly for no reason. He explains that air pressure causes this when the main door of the lobby is opened. For nearly five-and-a half hours we hear Gainsbourg describe herself as a horrible person, and SkarsgÃ¥rd always contradicts: There are reasons beyond her control, there are sympathetic explanations, there are classical models. She is a good person and all people are good people at heart who should be forgiven. This rationalizing stops when she mentions a “celibate pedophile” she once met. She respected that man for denying his urges for his entire life. The man never approached a child or anyone else, never harmed or loved anyone, choosing to live a sad and cloistered life for the benefit of others. This is the only tale of Gainsbourg’s, the only human specimen, that angers SkarsgÃ¥rd. He will not tolerate a pedophilic impulse, even inactive, and refuses to consider how that man chose to suffer rather than risking harm to others. This human alone he will not forgive.
A flashback shows how Gainsbourg’s celibate pedophile’s secret was uncovered: He was visibly aroused by the mention of a child’s playground. As Gainsbourg retells the story and mentions the playground, we see SkarsgÃ¥rd vividly imagine the rusted chains of a child’s swing, squeaking as the swing gently sways.
Nymphomaniac ends tragically of course, and one of the final images is an image of the cat flap moving as Gainsbourg leaves the building. The slightly swinging little door is accompanied by the audio quote of the squeaking rusted chains of the child’s swing. Kapow, as they say. Over-educated sexless SkarsgÃ¥rd and over-sexed ineducable Gainsbourg are the same. Each is the only person undeserving of self-forgiveness or compassion.
