Dogme 95 - Impact, cult appreciation and mainstream appropriation

In an event that would be one of many audacious moves in a provocative career, Danish auteur Lars von Trier launched a film-making manifesto in grand style at Paris' Odeon Theater. The manifesto in question was called Dogme 95, printed on hundreds of red leaflets, which von Trier proceeded to throw down from the theater's balcony. Inside the leaflets: the now infamous Vow of Chastity - "a set of rules for the making of motion pictures which, if pursued with passion and commitment, could perhaps enable film-makers to make more truthful, less boring movies" (Kelly, 2000).

Dogme 95 would become a talking point again on 20 May 1998 at the Cannes film festival. British film critic Mark Kermode was ejected mid-way through the premiere of von Trier's first Dogme film The Idiots (1998); meanwhile Dogme 95 co-conspirator, Thomas Vinterberg would become the recipient of the Grand Jury Prize for his Festen (1998).

The Idiots

Festen

In a way, the events surrounding the two Dogme films represent something of a microcosm of the polarising responses of audiences and critics alike to Dogme 95 as a whole - and particularly in the case of The Idiots.

In the 20 years since its debut, The Idiots has remained a subject of much contention within film circles, not least for its transgressive content - the film depicts a commune of people who indulge in bouts of behaviour referred to as 'spazzing' in which they pretend to be developmentally disabled.

Perusing the user reviews section of the film's IMDb page leads to some interesting results that speak to its divisive nature. Filtering reviews with a rating of 1/10 yields condemnations of The Idiots as 'pretentious and pornographic' or 'an embarrassment to the art of filmmaking' in which the film's experimental style is criticised as a 'marketing ploy'; while 10/10 reviews draw attention to a 'touching and affecting story'.

The content of the film even pushed boundaries beyond personal taste into matters of censorship when The Idiots became the subject of an Ofcom investigation after Channel 4 aired the film uncensored and complete with its penetrative orgy scene.

(Left to Right) Kristian Levring, Soren Kragh-Jacobsen, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg

The desire to rebel; the audacious manifesto, vow of chastity, and the confrontational and controversial films that were born of them made Dogme 95 an immediate cult sensation. What started with a manifesto scribed between von Trier and Vinterberg became a movement spearheaded by four Danish filmmakers (rounded out by the presence of Soren Kragh-Jacobsen and Kristian Levring) that left an indelible mark on their home country's culture (with Dogme sensibilities imparted on the nation's cooking and architecture) and caused a ripple effect throughout cinema from the art-house to, ironically, the mainstream.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) was an exercise in horror at times unwittingly in accordance with Dogme 95; it was even noted by Jonathan Romney that the film 'could be Hansel and Gretel shot according to Dogma 95 rules'. The film shares some aesthetic and tonal qualities with Dogme; namely the predominantly hand-held DV camera work, a faux-documentary sensibility a la The Idiots, and despite the horror genre's reliance on score to generate fear, there is a distinct absence of score in favour of the film's found footage approach to portraying the film's events as real. The film achieved a worldwide gross of $248,639,099 in a moment that saw the mainstream appropriate and profit from cult cinema.

Dan Myrick on Dogme95 for a retrospective by The Guardian

The Blair Witch Project became ground zero for "found footage" film-making; a trend that would reach a creative peak with Cloverfield (2008) and Chronicle (2012) - two films which utilise VFX and CGI within an otherwise Dogme-lite aesthetic - which both came within the decade following Dogme 95's dissolution in 2002 once its founders bemoaned that Dogme had become a genre in and of itself.

Works Cited:
Kelly, R. (2000). The name of this book is Dogme95. London: Faber and Faber, p.4.