This year’s Oscar nominations caused excitement for a change, as opposed to pain, with more diverse nominations in film and the impact of Parasite’s big win last year, giving more films that are not just in the English language a chance for a win in the main categories. One nomination that particularly impressed me was the well-deserved inclusion of one of Denmark’s most notorious filmmakers, Thomas Vinterberg, for best director for Another Round. Vinterberg has risen to fame overseas with previous foreign picture Oscar contender The Hunt, and co-creating the filmmaking movement Dogme 95 with Lars von Trier that influenced many European filmmakers in the late 1990’s in its strive for realist filmmaking. It therefore feels only just to reflect on his stunning sophomore film, The Celebration, whose narrative concerning the fall of patriarch and horrors of the family, put him on the map as a filmmaker with something to say.
The plight of the father is certainly not a unique subject matter, it is how the filmmaker approaches and their interpretation of children’s eventual disillusionment with the father as a figure of truth and power. First of all, to discuss Vinterberg’s approach to this subject matter we must focus on the Danish filmmaking movement whose guidelines Vinterberg’s film is following. The Celebration opens with an image of the Dogme 95 manifesto and discussing the inclusion of this is crucial to analysing the film, as it doesn’t just indicate that Vinterberg’s work is following the guidelines of using only diegetic sound and minimalist filmmaking, it is also purposeful in understanding why it is being employed and what meanings are developed due to this filmmaking style. Yvonne Griggs aptly describes this movement as an antagonistic response to Hollywood’s global domination of the film industry.
Outlined in its manifesto, Dogme 95’s central aim was to bring about ‘the ultimate democratisation of the cinema’ by picturing a style of filmmaking that adheres to a set of specific guidelines, the filmmakers of Dogme must pledge a ‘Vow of Chastity’ to that they will follow, that outlaws artifice and expensive technologies. If you think this all sounds stupidly pretentious don’t worry, you’re right, yet as this style of filmmaking is purposeful in Vinterberg’s case, we are drawn to focus on the intentional raw nature of this film. It is reminiscent of a play, partly from being an adaptation of Vinterberg’s play of the same name and of the Shakespearean qualities of the film, and being filmed entirely in one location is not only part of Dogme’s outlawing of artifice and expensive shooting destinations – but to create a sense of suffocation within the family.
The Celebration is a tragic satire that focuses on the celebration of the 60th birthday of Helge (Henning Moritzen), the family patriarch to Michael (Thomas Bo Larsen), Helene (Paprika Steen), and his oldest son Christian (Ulrich Thomsen), who is more resigned than his siblings which we discover is due to his twin sister Linda committing suicide prior to the film, in the same family country hotel that this birthday celebration takes place in. This celebration is marred with scandalous reveals, as Helen’s boyfriend (Gbatokai Dakinah) arrives, revealing the sick nature of the family, with Michael and the guests chanting a racist song around the dining room, and Christian’s toast to his father revealing he sexually abused both Christian and Linda.
An Aristotelian tragedy of contemporary cinema, Vinterberg’s temporal filming and narrative structure shows the rise and fall of the patriarch over the course of one evening, in one location. The setting is crucial not just to the Dogme 95 guidelines but being a hotel of the family, it is a symbol of Helge’s patriarchal power in its isolation and stature. Griggs discussed the Hamlet evocative imagery with the “castle-like” hotel, peopled by a “microcosm of a morally-corrupt, racist, middle-class Danish society” that evokes the cultural memory of “Shakespeare’s corruptible Danish courtiers” led by Claudius, the covetous murderer, who is reflected in The Celebration in the persona of Helge, the incestuous abuser. Moreover, the sparsely decorated hotel for the audience creates the feeling of suffocation and voyeurism as the handheld camera and shots angled from the corner of Michael’s bedroom like CCTV footage, along with shooting on video; the film feels raw and real as you are always with the characters or at a distance looking where you feel witness to the film’s events.
Vinterberg’s film allows you to bear witness as one would witness a play, Vinterberg alludes to Hamlet and King Lear on the notion of being story of patriarchal failure and sexual impotence in the narrative but it is also in the conscious filming style of distance handheld shots in the perspective of the ghost of Linda creating a feeling of unease in the unnatural, voyeuristic filming style of shooting from another room or up high. The reason for this feeling of unsettling in this celebratory day being revealed by Christian is swiftly denied with his own mother Else (Birthe Neumann), giving a toast accusing Christian of an overactive imagination (echoes Gertrude in Hamlet taking the side of the Cladius over her son), however the discovery of Linda’s sucide note in the hotel reveals the truth to Christian’s claims and the cause of her sucide. This spectacular usurping of the father’s respected position is where the Shakespearean comparisons are evident. I believe whilst these may be unconscious parallels, the King Lear and Hamlet elements are embedded into the subject matter, transforming The Celebration into a contemporary tragedy. Griggs argued that the spectral presence of Linda, whom we see in the shadows of candlelight in Christian’s dream sequence, that encourages Christian to confront his father is reminiscent of the ghost of Hamlet’s father encouraging Hamlet to avenge his father by killing Claudius.
Vinterberg, throughout his career, has fueled our reading of what makes a contemporary tragedy and why the subject of the fall of the patriarch still interests us today with the film’s continued relevance. If you have seen HBO’s Succession, I recommended The Celebration as an excellent accompaniment (if the subject of tyrannical father figures and his unlikable and troubled children are your forte), or if you have seen Vinterberg’s Another Round and want to get more into his films – The Celebration is a brilliant film to see where Vinterberg started and how films do not expensive equipment or high budgets to create impactful stories.
Image Credit: The MovieDB
