We all fall down

When funding fell through for Lars Von Trier’s sophomore feature film, instead of completely scrapping the project, he transformed it into something new. The least seen of his major works, Epidemic (1987) is a very self-referential piece for the director, a film about the making of itself, real life eventually contaminated by fiction.

Von Trier and co writer Niels Vorsel play themselves. They have been working on a script for their Danish producer (Claes Hansen, also himself) titled The Cop and the Whore (a reference to Von Trier's previous The Element of Crime [1984]), but the floppy disk that contained their work has inexplicably been erased. With only five days to come up with a new script, and with neither one able to recall much of what The Cop and the Whore was actually about, Von Trier and Vorsel begin work on Epidemic. The new script is about a doctor traveling the European countryside trying to prevent a plague, unaware that he is the one actually spreading it.

The "real world" parts of the film dealing with the scriptwriting are shot in grainy 16mm, while visualizations of the Epidemic script are filmed in gorgeous, smooth 35mm (all black and white) and starring Von Trier as the plague-spreading doctor. This approach manages to touch both ends on Von Trier's visual spectrum, simultaneously evoking both the highly stylized Element and Europa (aka Zentropa, [1991]) and the hand-held look of “The Kingdom” (1994). Even so, the overall look and feeling of Epidemic (brought about in part by its very low budget of approximately 150,000 US$) lacks the immediate surface slickness of the visual schemes of the films that flank it. There is no attempt, as in Element, to make every single shot look color processed, and there is none of Europa's front- and rear- projection free-for-all. This may account for some of Epidemic's low visibility, but the film's very nature makes it seem somewhat more difficult to approach.

As they explain in their audio commentary, much of the scriptwriting part of the film is embellished nonfiction. Though the men play themselves (as does Von Trier's wife at the time), and they did have to come up with a new script, this should obviously not be approached as straight documentary. For instance, at one point Von Trier and Vorsel travel to Germany to visit Udo Kier. Kier tells them that his mother has just died, and he relates a story about his birth that she had previously told him. In reality, Kier's mother had died years earlier. The story he tells is a combination of truth and a fiction created by the writers that then informs their Epidemic script. These little touches (along with the writers' obvious easy rapport) help to suck the viewer in as real and reel become even more blurred.

Epidemic concludes with a dinner given by the Von Triers and Norsel for the film's producer. The filmmakers bring in a woman and a hypnotist (hypnotism is a link between the three films in Von Trier's “Europe” trilogy) to help illustrate what Epidemic is about. As the woman goes under, the dinner turns frighteningly nightmarish. (Even Von Trier and Norsel are unnerved by this sequence on the commentary.) It is a scene that rivals any of the deranged mealtime scenes of David Lynch or any of the scares in “The Kingdom.”

That said, Epidemic is also Von Trier's funniest work outside of “Kingdom.” The writers' time crunch for their new script is milked for quite a few laughs, as are odd bit involving how striped toothpaste manages to come out of the tube striped, Hansen's obsession with windbreakers, and Norsel's underage pen pals. Norsel and Von Trier clearly had a good time making the film despite, or perhaps even because of, the last minute budget gutting. Much as the Dogme restrictions he and Thomas Vinterberg conceived yeas later were an attempt to get back to the basics of filmmaking (well, that and to cause a ruckus), Von Trier used this situation of being cornered to his advantage and came up with a film that is much more accessible than its description lets on.

Epidemic has never been available on home video in the U.S. before and Home Vision Entertainment has given it a very nice debut presentation on disc. The black and white image looks very nice and appropriate to whichever film gauge is being used. The first jump to 35 is a bit of a shock as the inherent graininess of the 16 mm footage gives way to crisp, contrasty smoothness. Audio is well presented; despite the low budget, the dialogue was very well recorded (and in some cases, post-synched). The main musical accompaniment is the overture from Wager's Tannhaussen.

The chief bonus feature is a 53-minute documentary titled FreeDogme. Von Trier, Wim Wenders, Jean-Marc Barr (director of the Dogme film Lovers, and also an actor in most of Von Trier's films), and Lone Scherfig (the Dogme Italian for Beginners) are all given DV cameras and linked up to each other and the documentary's directors Marie Berthelius and Roger Narbonne via a live video feed. They discuss their approaches to filmmaking in general and specifically the Dogme manifesto. Giving the interview subjects cameras helps to avoid a static talking heads style approach and keeps things interesting visually, whether Von Trier is out in his canoe, or Wenders sneaking off to the loo. The result is very conversational and even viewers tired of hearing about Dogme are likely to the documentary engrossing. Von Trier may have a reputation for being a hard-ass on his sets, but here at least he come across as extremely affable. He even seems moderately star-struck to be participating in the film with Wenders whose early films proved to be quite an inspiration to the other three.