Lars Von Trier Beyond Depression - by Linda Badley (Paperback)

About the Book

"Lars von Trier built a reputation as a provocateur from the start-but in the late 2000s, he entered an even more inflammatory phase. Amid Cannes controversies, Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011), Nymphomaniac (2013-14), and The House That Jack Built (2018) brandished the cinematic virtuosity von Trier once banned under the Dogme 95 Manifesto while subjecting audiences to "extreme" cinema. Following von Trier's experience of clinical depression in 2006 and 2007, these films took an aggressively personal and retrospective turn against the backdrop of the director's controversy-courting public appearances. Playing against widespread assumptions, Linda Badley takes a reparative approach, offering an in-depth examination of these four films and the contexts that produced them. Drawing on numerous interviews with the director and his collaborators as well as inside access to archival materials, she provides a thorough and comprehensive account of von Trier's preproduction and creative process. Highlighting a transmedial turn, Badley tracks von Trier's artistic touchstones from Wagner, Proust, and the Marquis de Sade to Scandinavian erotic cinema and serial killer genre tropes. She considers his portrayals of mental illness and therapy, gender and sexuality, nature and extinction, shedding light on the thematic concerns that unite these films as a distinct cycle. Offering nuanced readings of these films, the book emphasizes the significance of von Trier's work for current critical and philosophical debates, showing how they engage with notions of the Anthropocene, "dark ecology," and the postcinematic"--

Book Synopsis

Lars von Trier built a reputation as a provocateur from the start--but in the late 2000s, he entered an even more inflammatory phase. Amid Cannes controversies, Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011), Nymphomaniac (2013-14), and The House That Jack Built (2018) brandished the cinematic virtuosity von Trier once banned under the Dogme 95 Manifesto while subjecting audiences to "extreme" cinema. Following von Trier's experience of clinical depression in 2006 and 2007, these films took an aggressively personal and retrospective turn against the backdrop of the director's controversy-courting public appearances.

Playing against widespread assumptions, Linda Badley takes a reparative approach, offering an in-depth examination of these four films and the contexts that produced them. Drawing on numerous interviews with the director and his collaborators as well as inside access to archival materials, she provides a thorough and comprehensive account of von Trier's preproduction and creative process. Highlighting a transmedial turn, Badley tracks von Trier's artistic touchstones from Wagner, Proust, and the Marquis de Sade to Scandinavian erotic cinema and serial killer genre tropes. She considers his portrayals of mental illness and therapy, gender and sexuality, nature and extinction, shedding light on the thematic concerns that unite these films as a distinct cycle. Offering nuanced readings of these films, the book emphasizes the significance of von Trier's work for current critical and philosophical debates, showing how they engage with notions of the Anthropocene, "dark ecology," and the postcinematic.

Review Quotes

Lars von Trier Beyond Depression is the first comprehensive account of the recent work of Lars von Trier, offering a lively and compelling critical evaluation of his cycle of 'post-depression' films that began with Melancholia (2009). A definitive resource on this period of von Trier's output, its engagement with primary source material, interviews, and its incisive close readings will be indispensable to anyone interested in the filmmaker and his place within contemporary cinema.--Tina Kendall, Anglia Ruskin University

About the Author

Linda Badley is professor emerita of English at Middle Tennessee State University. She is the author of Lars von Trier (2011) and coeditor of Nordic Noir, Adaptation, and Appropriation (2020), among other books.