The Idiots is Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier's 1998
exploration of normality as a social system, the
constraints it places on individuals to behave in
prescribed ways even under abnormal circumstances.
The film chronicles the escapades of a small group of
young middle-class men and women who have formed an
organization to upset what they perceive to be
bourgeois principles and participants, that is,
well-to-do and unscrupulous people. The group attempts
to accomplish its goals by acting as if they are
mentally challenged, so as to annoy the gentlefolk
with their
"spassing" (spastic behavior), and interacting with
each other within the confines of their private
commune. Here they create their own subculture with
behaviors very different from those enforced by
conventional society, which, of course, allows for
extensive comical nudity and poor table manners.
In telling this tale, which he wrote in four days
during May 1997, von Trier utilizes the Dogme 95
filmmaking technique, one as convention-breaking and
uncontrollable as the subversive subculture he
depicts. Dogme 95 was conceived by a small group of
Danish directors who wanted to break the rules of
modern movie-making. To consolidate their rebellion,
they wrote a set of new tenets: filmmakers working
within these rules must record sound and picture at
once, not use props, manipulated light, or musical
scores, and loosen typical restrictions on
improvisation. This all fits perfectly with The Idiots' efforts to subvert and "poke fun" at the
cultural hegemony while at the same time acknowledging
individual needs for rules and patterns. The film also
explores how some of these rules are easily adopted
and others fragment the psyche, contingent on the
given environment and social situation: a set pattern
for acting cannot work for everyone in every
situation.
The Idiots focuses mainly on one woman's struggle to
find a way to behave under tragic circumstances while
maintaining both her identity and sanity. Karen (Bodil
Jorgensen), a lonely and depressed lower-middle-class
woman, unexpectedly meets three members of the
organization led by the egotistical intellectual
Stoffer (Jens Albinus), and is drawn into their fold.
She participates in the group's subversive activities
by finding her "inner idiot" — that part of the self
that is yet undefined and unappreciated by a bourgeois
society. However, Karen is not the same as the other
idiots, in that she is not acting on theory or
principle, but from her own desperate psychological
needs, in particular, her immediate need to deal with
the reality and unpredictability of death. We discover
that she has abandoned her family following a recent
tragedy (particulars are never revealed). Where
enculturation fails, idiocy prevails, and Karen copes
with her loss by freeing her innocent and inarticulate
nature.
For each of the group's members, acting like an idiot
is a personal and unique expression, a release from
repressive social limitations but also from real
responsibilities. For example, Axel (Knud Romer
Jorgensen) uses the Idiots to escape the reality of
his wife's recent childbirth and all the burdens it
bears (he claims rearing a child is too middle-class)
and enjoys an affair with another member, Katrine
(Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis), acting out both his latent
aggressions toward society and the repressed sexuality
of his monogamous marriage. However, the idealism of
these lofty abstractions, making fun of middle-class
culture through play-acting, begins to fray when
reality forces the group to accept their
responsibilities.
It is this conflict between responsibility and freedom
that the film exposes and which underlies an essential
contradiction in life: living a free life — any life
— has its own rules and potential for
fascism as well. Stoffer, who loses all control when
faced with "fascists" (such as municipal bureaucrats) resembles the typical authoritarian leader in his
uncaring and domineering attitude toward others,
seeing himself as the best idiot, the most rebellious,
challenging them to live up to his ideals. In a
further critique of the myth of a totally free
lifestyle and irresponsible rebellion, the group's
communal system works only because they are staying at
Stoffer's rich uncle's house, use Axel's corporate
credit card to buy food, and fail to face their
private lives with their idiocy. If spassing out
cannot be incorporated into one's daily life, then the
problems and stress of typical reality are not
rectified, only repressed as heartily as one's inner
idiot was beforehand.
The only character who seems to need this form of
therapy is Karen, whose life has been shattered by her
recent trauma. She does not have the luxury to view
this behavior as "only" joking, or as a theoretical
attack on the bourgeoisie. It is not some airy ideal
for her, but a means to unleash real pain and try to
find delight in life again. For this reason, she is
the only one capable of bringing her newfound idiocy
back home to display in front of her closest
relatives. So, when Stoffer challenges the group to
formalize their solidarity by spassing out in their
private lives, away from the support of the entire
group, Karen is the only one to succeed. She, as an
individual, needs this rehabilitating experience not
only to free herself of social constraints, but to
make it to the next stage of her life.
The other idiots realize that giving up control only
has meaning when control can be reasserted afterwards.
The group dissolves upon failing their respective
tests and the members never see each other again.
Karen returns to visit her wrecked family and spasses
silently during a tense reunion and leaves when her
grieving husband physically chastises her. The ending
is ambiguous, but it is this ambiguity, free from
cut-and-dried definitions or meanings, which gives
value to the Idiots, both in content (as a group) and
form (as a film). Opening a door to one's own
unhampered emotionality, escaping rigidity and habit,
and rediscovering the abnormal can be a method for
growth and coping with difficult situations, but there
are limits. Returning to those situations and dealing
with them should be the eventual goal, according to
the film; the Idiots cannot exist perpetually.
However, as interviews with the characters throughout
the film express, the experience of having
participated in the group affects each member forever,
and here is the potential for change. Although the
film never overtly depicts Karen's fate after spassing
in front of her mourning family, we are certain is the
most defiant act of her life, as well as in the film.
The Idiots points out that it is the individual
empowered to resist cultural edicts which creates the
arena for true social transformation. Karen's act
demonstrates the arbitrariness of civilized behavior
and becomes a singular triumph amidst clashing
ideologies, but neither of these results can provide a
utopian existence free from responsibility or the
harsh terrors of the unexpected.
