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Reviews24
kleiner_fuchs's rating
(note: I watched the short version, about 140 minutes, of this film)
Beautiful landscapes, beautiful interiors with subtle natural lighting, beautiful actors and some beautiful moments don't save this film from being a serious disappointment that may be tolerable on a TV screen, but certainly not on a cinema screen.
Allegedly this is a story about passion, and early on in the film there is a promising moment when Schiller, soaking wet and half-frozen after rescuing a child out of a stream, is warmed up by the sisters clinging to his body; this was quite erotic, but sadly it remained the only erotic moment in the whole film. The director's approach to sensuality and passion here is much too buttoned up; the result is bland and soporific. You can't have women like Herzsprung and Confurius in such a film and never have them undress; this is simply inexcusable.
I won't talk about the score here; the music is so irrelevant that it doesn't even affect the film negatively. I'd like to talk about scenes: Usually, a film, be it a Hollywood film or an art film, is made of scenes; a succession of scenes, with each individual scene having a beginning, an ending, a development in between, and a relation to the preceding and to the following scenes.
Dominik Graf obviously doesn't believe in scenes. Take, for example, the beginning of his film: First shot is a close-up of Confurius sitting in a coach. I expected that I would get to know this character now and that I would be guided into the world of the film. Well, I was wrong. Suddenly an ugly voice-over starts explaining who this girl is and what she is about to do. Then we cut to something else. So what about the opening scene? There simply is no opening scene! This is terrible. Imagine a writer writing a novel and not even getting his first sentence right. The editing is terrible throughout. I remember at one point there is a cut to a wide shot of a street, and about half a second later there is another cut away to something else before we even had time to appreciate what is going on in this street. Terrible. However, the general problem concerning the editing is not that it is too fast, but (and I don't know if the writer/director or the editor is to blame for it) that the editor was incapable of giving the story a compelling structure, a recognizable rhythm. Instead of a succession of meaningful scenes we get an erratic tapestry of meaningless pretty shots, and even if these shots group themselves to a kind of individual scene from time to time, there is no weight behind it, no sense that this scene had to start at exactly this point and had to end at exactly that point. In contrast to the sad mess that "Die geliebten Schwestern" is, you may want to have a look at Kubrick's "Lolita" (there may be many other good examples, but this film comes to my mind right now as a benchmark for masterful writing): Instead of trying to cram as many scenes of Nabokov's novel as possible into the screenplay, they wrote mainly long or very long unforgettable scenes, that give the actors time to breathe and to unfold.
Bottom line: If you love the art of filmmaking and wan't to spare yourself some serious frustration, I don't recommend this one.
Beautiful landscapes, beautiful interiors with subtle natural lighting, beautiful actors and some beautiful moments don't save this film from being a serious disappointment that may be tolerable on a TV screen, but certainly not on a cinema screen.
Allegedly this is a story about passion, and early on in the film there is a promising moment when Schiller, soaking wet and half-frozen after rescuing a child out of a stream, is warmed up by the sisters clinging to his body; this was quite erotic, but sadly it remained the only erotic moment in the whole film. The director's approach to sensuality and passion here is much too buttoned up; the result is bland and soporific. You can't have women like Herzsprung and Confurius in such a film and never have them undress; this is simply inexcusable.
I won't talk about the score here; the music is so irrelevant that it doesn't even affect the film negatively. I'd like to talk about scenes: Usually, a film, be it a Hollywood film or an art film, is made of scenes; a succession of scenes, with each individual scene having a beginning, an ending, a development in between, and a relation to the preceding and to the following scenes.
Dominik Graf obviously doesn't believe in scenes. Take, for example, the beginning of his film: First shot is a close-up of Confurius sitting in a coach. I expected that I would get to know this character now and that I would be guided into the world of the film. Well, I was wrong. Suddenly an ugly voice-over starts explaining who this girl is and what she is about to do. Then we cut to something else. So what about the opening scene? There simply is no opening scene! This is terrible. Imagine a writer writing a novel and not even getting his first sentence right. The editing is terrible throughout. I remember at one point there is a cut to a wide shot of a street, and about half a second later there is another cut away to something else before we even had time to appreciate what is going on in this street. Terrible. However, the general problem concerning the editing is not that it is too fast, but (and I don't know if the writer/director or the editor is to blame for it) that the editor was incapable of giving the story a compelling structure, a recognizable rhythm. Instead of a succession of meaningful scenes we get an erratic tapestry of meaningless pretty shots, and even if these shots group themselves to a kind of individual scene from time to time, there is no weight behind it, no sense that this scene had to start at exactly this point and had to end at exactly that point. In contrast to the sad mess that "Die geliebten Schwestern" is, you may want to have a look at Kubrick's "Lolita" (there may be many other good examples, but this film comes to my mind right now as a benchmark for masterful writing): Instead of trying to cram as many scenes of Nabokov's novel as possible into the screenplay, they wrote mainly long or very long unforgettable scenes, that give the actors time to breathe and to unfold.
Bottom line: If you love the art of filmmaking and wan't to spare yourself some serious frustration, I don't recommend this one.
Note: this review is about the 4-hour-cut (two parts with 2 hours each) of NYMPHOMANIAC, that is shown in German cinemas.
"Forget about pleasure" – that could have been the tag line of NYMPHOMANIAC instead of "Forget about love", as we are never allowed to see, or feel, real pleasure on the actor's faces while they are having (simulated) sex; ironically, the only scene where something like pleasure can be felt is a shot of two little girls playing in the bathroom early on in the picture. Could this be called a "failure" on the part of the director or the actors considering that this is supposed to be the story of a sex addict on a never-ending quest for ecstasy? Or did Von Trier want it to be that way?
Regardless of this "failure", NYMPHOMANIAC is not a bad film, on the contrary: It is often very funny, often very beautiful, sometimes moving, sometimes provocative, and always entertaining, but it is also an uneven film. Take, for example, the opening sequence: Great production design and delicate sound design work together to create a mesmerizing atmosphere for several minutes, then suddenly a deafening Rammstein song starts playing. Is this a stroke of genius or is it simply the worst possible choice of music in this place, brutally destroying the carefully built atmosphere?
There are more strange directorial choices: Throughout the film we get ugly, pointless inserts (nature shots, animals, choir boys etc.) that are derived from low-quality, low-resolution video material. Then there are some lines that seem to have no connection to the characters and are only there because Von Trier wanted to say something important, and instead of saying it in an interview, he decided to put it in his film. This is always a bad choice; when Joe and Seligman are discussing topics like political correctness and pedophilia, I hear Von Trier talking, where it should be the characters I hear talking.
The whole film, despite its length, to me felt like a puzzle with too many parts missing: so many things left unexplained (for example, how exactly did Joe find that "K" character?), so many scenes that I would have liked to see. The non-chronological structure of the film with its flashbacks, inserts and captions didn't help to tie the whole thing together either.
The ending (the "moral" and the closing "punch line") I found to be extremely stupid and it left me sorely disappointed, it felt like a bad joke. I'll refrain from discussing it here, see it for yourself and decide for yourself.
Von Triers previous films ANTICHRIST and MELANCHOLIA were masterpieces, securing him and his unique style of filmmaking a place in the pantheon. NYMPHOMANIAC is no such masterpiece. I will recommend it as it is very entertaining, but it is also quite shallow and it didn't tell me anything interesting about sexuality or society. The important matters that the film brings up would have deserved to be dealt with more seriously. And by that I don't mean to imply that the film should have been less funny; in the past there have been funny and charming sex comedies (for example, Sunday IN NEW YORK, 1963), that have dealt with sexuality and hypocrisy in a decidedly serious and thought-provoking way.
"Forget about pleasure" – that could have been the tag line of NYMPHOMANIAC instead of "Forget about love", as we are never allowed to see, or feel, real pleasure on the actor's faces while they are having (simulated) sex; ironically, the only scene where something like pleasure can be felt is a shot of two little girls playing in the bathroom early on in the picture. Could this be called a "failure" on the part of the director or the actors considering that this is supposed to be the story of a sex addict on a never-ending quest for ecstasy? Or did Von Trier want it to be that way?
Regardless of this "failure", NYMPHOMANIAC is not a bad film, on the contrary: It is often very funny, often very beautiful, sometimes moving, sometimes provocative, and always entertaining, but it is also an uneven film. Take, for example, the opening sequence: Great production design and delicate sound design work together to create a mesmerizing atmosphere for several minutes, then suddenly a deafening Rammstein song starts playing. Is this a stroke of genius or is it simply the worst possible choice of music in this place, brutally destroying the carefully built atmosphere?
There are more strange directorial choices: Throughout the film we get ugly, pointless inserts (nature shots, animals, choir boys etc.) that are derived from low-quality, low-resolution video material. Then there are some lines that seem to have no connection to the characters and are only there because Von Trier wanted to say something important, and instead of saying it in an interview, he decided to put it in his film. This is always a bad choice; when Joe and Seligman are discussing topics like political correctness and pedophilia, I hear Von Trier talking, where it should be the characters I hear talking.
The whole film, despite its length, to me felt like a puzzle with too many parts missing: so many things left unexplained (for example, how exactly did Joe find that "K" character?), so many scenes that I would have liked to see. The non-chronological structure of the film with its flashbacks, inserts and captions didn't help to tie the whole thing together either.
The ending (the "moral" and the closing "punch line") I found to be extremely stupid and it left me sorely disappointed, it felt like a bad joke. I'll refrain from discussing it here, see it for yourself and decide for yourself.
Von Triers previous films ANTICHRIST and MELANCHOLIA were masterpieces, securing him and his unique style of filmmaking a place in the pantheon. NYMPHOMANIAC is no such masterpiece. I will recommend it as it is very entertaining, but it is also quite shallow and it didn't tell me anything interesting about sexuality or society. The important matters that the film brings up would have deserved to be dealt with more seriously. And by that I don't mean to imply that the film should have been less funny; in the past there have been funny and charming sex comedies (for example, Sunday IN NEW YORK, 1963), that have dealt with sexuality and hypocrisy in a decidedly serious and thought-provoking way.
