The Idiots (2000)

Following Dogma 95's "vow of chastity," The Idiots (1998) bears no directorial credit, but anyone familiar with Dogma co-author Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves (1996) and The Kingdom (1994) will recognize the romantic view of mental states that are not quite rational or adult. Reveling in Dogma roughness (with the cameraman and boom mike making onscreen cameos), von Trier's characters and film deliberately, and sometimes brilliantly, set out to provoke by acting the "idiot" to disrupt bourgeois order; the skittish, improvisational Dogma style impeccably matches the premise, as neither the "spazzers" nor the professed Dogma-ites quite know where the experiment may take them. Unfortunately, the commune's exertions occasionally seem more like a tortured class in Method acting than a visceral, political move toward personal discovery. Von Trier's idealization of "idiocy" as a positive liberating power is also muddled by the suggestion in Stoffer's character that nurturing one's inner idiot is interchangeable with nurturing one's inner jerk. After its mixed reception at Cannes, The Idiots' nudity and orgy predictably provoked the American ratings board; von Trier cheekily refused to cut the most explicit parts and placed black bars over the offending genitalia, revealing how artistically invasive such (bourgeois) strictures can be. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide