Why do Greek tragedies still define today’s movies? Because, what else is Dogme 95, if not a return to the art of storytelling in its purest form, an attempt to turn cinema into the absolute theatrical realism?
I regard Dogme as the reinterpretation of Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, only now the rules are formed to force themselves on the art of cinematography and not functioning as a mere expression of what already exists. The biggest, most profound difference between cinema and theatre is that the former can magnify the detail, any detail (in a close up, with a slow motion) and thus wins in realism, while the other is realism, by the mere fact that it is done in front of you, live, for your sake only. Dogme tries to have the best of both worlds and that’s why it is the most influential cinema movement of recent history: Dogme uses cinema’s power along with raw and unmodified theatrical conventions. In Dogme movies, you can still have the (ever so powerful) close up, but the face will have no make up. The effect created by this combination is extremely dramatic.
Ever so appropriately the first Dogme movie is Festen, which is an archetypical tragedy, almost of the purest kind. The story is simple and it has to do with the oldest and sickest of human maladies: the family in its extremely dysfunctional form.
In the pater familias’s 60th birthday celebration the whole family along with guests is gathered in the old family hotel to celebrate. In this feast, which is the definition of bourgeoisie in its correctness and adoration of the family ‘rules’, the eldest son reveals that his father molested him and his twin sister (who took her own life a month ago) when they were children. The revelation finds initially the distrust and the indifference of the guests: they continue their dinner as if nothing has happened and they easily settle for the father’s naïve excuses. The son persists, further disclosing that his sister killed herself because of this abuse, only to be treated with more articulated disbelief and even violence. A letter of the dead sister is found however and is read on the table. The truth is unveiled and the oppressor becomes the victim: the youngest son, that careless mindless macho hits the father and tries to rape him only to be stopped by the eldest son, who made all the revelation in the first place. The victim forgives his oppressor. The following morning the father enters the dining hall and makes his (very theatrical) public apology. He is ostracised from the family, by being asked to leave the table so that the rest of them can ‘have their breakfast’, been deserted even by his wife, who finally teams up with her children. He accepts his fate stoically however, because he knows that such dirt has no place within the family structure, the family structure that he created and has his rules.
The entire film is extremely realistic with the exception of the last scene: the father’s public apology and his consequent acceptance of overall defeat is extremely stylisized. It must mean something, it must mean that an institution like a family still obeys its rules (and breakfast needs to be consumed in peace) and the world’s biggest pig obeys them when he has accepted his defeat. Maybe it shows the children’s ultimate revenge, that of taking away from their father what mattered to him the most: his family, where he was king. Now they are free to make it as they like it, by marrying the waitresses or random black men. The deconstruction of the fascist family has begun. There is indeed hope.
March 2006
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