The Idiots Reviews

This film is something special

Dogme number 2 revolves around a group of middle-class dropouts who spend their time pretending to be mentally and physically handicapped in public places. We see the group through the eyes of Karen who joins them out of curiousity as much as the need to fill a void in her life. The group continue to push each other to new heights of 'spazzing' and tensions also start to rise.

Lars Von Trier is a director who likes to provoke a reaction, any reaction, and he certainly succeeds with 'The Idiots'. Shocking, subversive and often very funny, the film defies description. Von Trier coaxes incredible performances from his fearless cast. Interesting and brave points are made about society's attitude to the disabled and instead of revulsion the group occasionally provokes our empathy. The film develops a cumulative power which makes the final scenes overpowering in their raw emotion.

Von Trier has an undeniable ability to find an exposed nerve and attack it mercilessly. While this means 'The Idiots' is often extremely uncomfortable viewing, it's a devastating experience. 'The Idiots' stands as one of the most important films of the 90's. Groundbreaking, original and simply brilliant.

Below the Knuckle

Watch this for 5 minutes and you will be deeply offended. Sit it out and you will be amazed and startled and have a whole new perspective on life.

It would be easy to dismiss this film as an attack on the mentally handicapped. That falls way short of any real understanding. The Idiots act out "challenging behaviours" to find their "inner idiot". Their antics cause the "normal" people in the film to start acting in turn - acting as if they were perfectly tolerant and accepting - as they make excuses and edge away.

This film draws that out in a series of - let's face it - hilarious set pieces. As they go on, the tension mounts and you wonder where the film could possibly be going. Then you reach the final scene - 5 minutes of the most intense emotional brutality that would scare off 99.99% of all aspiring actors. Brilliant.

Spazadelic

This is a genuinly shocking and intelligent film that has certainly pushed out the boundaries of what can be shown in mainstream cinema.

The film has some genuinly hilarious moments although I certainly felt guilty for laughing.

If you are in anyway a prude or easily offended, don't go near this film.

Classic film.

You, must see this film.

It is a comedy , but not of a traditional style.Kick started the dogme movement,Lars Von Trier is a genius.

Idiotic

This is one of those films that can be defined by saying you either get it or you don't. If you do get 'it', I'm sure you will see a masterpiece that subverts genre and convention, a brave and noble film that breaks down our own bounderies and forces us to look at ourselves in an entirley different way. Or, if you don't get 'it', you could just think the whole thing is overrated claptrap. I fall into latter category.

While the film is amusing in places, it is filled with deeply annoying characters whose motivations are never really developed or explained. Their 'goal', apparently, is to find their 'inner idiot' by acting like a mentally handicapped person in public. Why you would ever want to find your inner idiot in the first place is never explained.

Lars Von Trier is a very good director, but I truly feel this isn't one of his more enjoyable or watchable films - try Dogville or Dancer in the Dark instead. Or if your interested in the Dogme movement, of which The Idiots is a part, try Festen. The Idiots is one for the curious only.

Excellent film with some flaws

Although fascinating in its insights to overlapping complexities in human relations many of the analyses were insufficiently treated. The reasoning, visually and textually remains weak either because the entertainment (humour and experimentation) is lacking or the examination is not structured well enough.

Love it or hate it - it is guaranteed to make you feel

Many of the people I know who have seen this film have not been able to finish watching as it causes so much offence. I find it offensive, but it still remains one of my favourite films.

As an isolated event, I find the prospect of people pretending to be mentally retarded a disgraceful act. When considering it as a concept of a dark, cathartic release within modern society, it gives it a completely different light and one that can play on the mind.

Despite the intensity of much of the film, Lars Von Trier also includes a fantastic element of dark humour to the film and I found myself laughing out loud at several points.

After watching it my mind was racing and there were thousands of thoughts flooding through my head about censorship, boundaries between expression and insanity and the way people perceive the mentally handicapped.

Watch it! It will make you feel.

Too daft to take seriously, but few laughs either

A group of adults live communally in the house one of their number is

meant to be selling for his uncle, behaving like attention-seeking toddlers in the hope of finding their 'inner idiot'.

When not romping about the garden in arcadian idyll, the idiots' favourite pastime is to bully the 'normal' people they meet on various outings into

participating in their games. The reactions of these unwitting stooges

give a sanctimonious gloss to the encounters - most of the bystanders

ignore the idiots, but a few reveal hints of prejudice and condescension

that are strung out for all they're worth.

As for the much-vaunted gang bang, don't expect more than a couple of seconds footage of two of the idiots in the midst and the rest of them flopping around

naked on top of each other like a shoal of freshly caught fish.

Don't bother. Moodysson's "Together" is a funnier satire on alternative lifestyles and Vinterberg's "Festen" is a much better example of the dogme films.

A documentary-style film about a group of Danish adults pretending to be retards. Sometimes you wonder what is acting, what is real. There are some hilarious moments - things that "normal" people would never get away with - like when Jeppe (the so-called "baby retard" because he is so immature), is left alone in a bar with a group of tattooed bikers who have to help him go to the toilet. One of those films - as Lars von Trier is wont to make - that grabs you by the jugular and makes you think about how we people treat each other. See what happens when the idiots meet genuine retards, or when they challenge each other to share their "inner idiot" with the people they have left back home who should really matter to them. Is being middle-class really that great? Will we ever allow ourselves to be truly happy? Some parts of this film are disturbing and may cause offence, but perhaps they should: perhaps we need to be offended to realize how idiotic some of our normalized behaviour really is.

the idiotic path to setting yourself free

this film can be seen on many levels, but it is hard to work out whether it is really worth seeing it on any of these. setting up a commune for people who want to act the idiot (exactly what idiot means is interpreted in many ways) is such a bourgeois thing to do, that it is a struggle to see the film as a statement against bourgeois banality. that the project is seen to fail is just as well, for though some seem to gain something from their communal experience, i didn't get a sense of anyone deriving any lasting benefits from 'spassing' as they call it. the 'not on our doorstep' scenes are perhaps the best, but in the end, the only likeable characters are the people with learning disabilities who turn up in the middle of the film - they aren't trying to be something that they are not, and never could be. a film that shocks, but which perhaps shocks just for the sake/fun of it. rather misguided then, but i doubt you will have seen anything quite like it, so....