Thomas Vinterberg Movies
In addition to rapidly establishing himself as a formidable cinematic talent, Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg is notorious for celebrating the idea -- via his own career accomplishments and an overall philosophy he has encouraged in others -- of utilizing more lightweight film production equipment and smaller budgets, as a stride away from big-studio gigantism. His co-establishment (alongside Lars von Trier) of the Dogme 95 film movement exemplifies this idea.Born on May 19, 1969, in Copenhagen, Vinterberg graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 1993 with Last Round under his arm -- a student short that garnered a formidable number of honors around the globe for a first-timer, including the Jury Award and the VFF Young Talent Award; it would ultimately receive a 1994 Oscar nomination for Best Live-Action Short Subject. He went on to helm the short-subject follow-up The Boy Who Walked Backwards (1993) -- the sad tale of a Danish boy who internally chastises himself for the death of his brother in an automobile accident. Like its predecessor, the film pulled in scores of awards for its sensitive and elegiac treatment of a difficult subject, from the Best Short Film and Audience Award at the Nordic Panorama 1994 to the Public Prize at Clermont-Ferrand in 1994 to Best Drama at the 1995 Toronto Short Film Festival.
1995 saw Vinterberg officially form Dogme 95 with Zentropa and Breaking the Waves helmer Lars von Trier. Additional founders included The King Is Alive director Kristian Levring and The Boys from St. Petri auteur Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, all Danish natives. The central idea behind Dogme involved initiating an entire aesthetic and stylistic movement within cinema that revolved around the simplification of production rules. The men established several axioms that a film could not break if it were to be eligible for Dogme candidacy; these included an avoidance of genre films, a prohibition of artificial light and optical filters, on-location filming only, a restriction against non-location sound and added music, and no crediting of the director. (The men did not take the quality of individual films into consideration when judging their candidacy.) Dogme made something of an impact on the international film scene -- with over 100 films joining the "movement" to date (though, in time, von Trier and Vinterberg would abandon the project).
While Dogme 95 lasted, Vinterberg's debut feature, Festen (or The Celebration), became the first "official" Dogme film. Winner of the Jury Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, this comedy drama involves a Danish family that gathers to celebrate the 60th birthday of its patriarch, but becomes mired -- over the course of an honorary dinner -- in allegations of sexual abuse made by one of the children. In the vein of Vinterberg's earlier efforts, Festen sustained the director's reputation as a master; it won the Cannes Jury Prize, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film, the L.A. Film Critics' Association Award for Best Foreign Film, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Film in 1998, and earned dozens of additional nominations, too numerous to mention.
Vinterberg's next major work, the 2002 feature It's All About Love, not only broke free from Dogme but baffled everyone. Ostensibly a hybrid romance and sci-fi-adventure, the picture stars Claire Danes, Joaquin Phoenix, and Sean Penn. It takes place in a future dystopia where snow falls during the summer, people are sucked through a hole in the Ugandan sky, and an inexplicable epidemic is wiping out thousands of children. The central story involves a man (Phoenix) who discovers that his soon-to-be ex-wife (Danes), a famous ice skater, has been cloned. The unholy crypticism of the film alienated viewers and critics; with the exception of Dennis Lim's encouraging comments in The Village Voice, the few American reviewers who did approach the film universally panned it. Vinterberg's next feature, Dear Wendy, fared slightly better with the public and press (though not much). Starring Bill Pullman (The End of Violence), with a script by Von Trier, the drama explores the American fascination with handguns and the emergence of gang violence in the United States. Many attacked it as pretentious even as they applauded its naked ambition. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- 2007
In this comedy, Sebastian (Oliver Moller Knauer) is a handsome but shy young man living in a small town in Denmark who is cursed with a stutter. Sebastian is in love with a beautiful girl, Claudia (Helene Reingaard Neumann), who has agreed to marry him. However, Claudia isn't Sebastian's first love, and a chance meeting with his old girlfriend Maria (Ronja Mannov Olesen) leads to him being unfaithful to his fiancée for the first time. Sebastian could use some advice from a male role model, but the town is abuzz because Karl Kristian Schmidt (Thomas Bo Larsen), a internationally famous opera singer who is the village's most famous son, is coming home for a visit and no one has time to talk to him. Sebastian decides to ask his mother what to do and she makes a surprising confession -- while she's always told Sebastian his dad was killed in a train accident not long before he was born, the truth is Schmidt fathered him during a brief fling before he left town to seek his fortune. Now Sebastian is determined to meet the great singer during his brief visit, and it turns out Schmidt has plenty of advice for his long-lost son. En Mand Kommer Hjem (aka When A Man Comes Home) received its American premiere at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Oliver Møller Knauer, Thomas Bo Larsen, (more)
The contradictions of America's simultaneous love and fear of violence go under the microscope in this drama from Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg. Dick (Jamie Bell) is a timid young man growing up in a mining town where he's been deemed to frail to work with the other men. Dick is given a toy gun by a girl who works in a dime store, and he becomes fascinated with the weapon -- especially when it becomes clear that the gun isn't a toy after all. Dick and a handful of other local misfits who are also interested in guns form a gang called "the Dandies," a band of self-styled pacifists who make it their policy to never use their weapons as they lead the town's young people by example. However, as their obsession with firearms grows, Dick and his fellow Dandies are approached by local police chief Krugsby (Bill Pullman), who asks them to look after Sebastian (Danso Gordon), the violent son of Dick's maid Clarabelle (Novella Nelson). At first, the Dandies see this as a challenge to bring Sebastian over to the cause of nonviolence, but soon his influence begins to impact Dick and his compatriots, with devastating results. Scripted by Lars von Trier, Dear Wendy received its North American premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jamie Bell, Bill Pullman, (more)
An estranged couple are brought back together as they run for their lives in a future world where science as well as emotions have gone haywire in this sci-fi drama from director Thomas Vinterberg. In the year 2021, the world seems to have become a very strange place; an unexplained ailment is causing children to drop dead on the streets of New York, ice storms and floods strike major cities without notice, summer is marked by periodic snowfalls, and a strange hole has appeared in the Ugandan sky that causes people to loose the grip of gravity and drift off into space. In the midst of all this, internationally known figure skater Elena (Claire Danes) is getting divorced from her husband John (Joaquin Phoenix) after an 18-month separation. John has arrived in New York City to have Elena sign the divorce papers, but after finally making his way through her entourage, he discovers her to be unhappy and out of sorts, and she asks him to stay. John soon learns that Elena and her staff have a secret -- David (Alun Armstrong), her manager, has had Elena cloned, and now there are three duplicates of her to stand in if she should be killed or injured. John's discovery puts both him and Elena in grave danger, and they are soon on the run from David and his underlings. Meanwhile, Marciello (Sean Penn) ponders the unstable state of the world as he flies from one place to another after a heroic dose of pills designed to combat the fear of flying. It's All About Love received its North American premier at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes, (more)
- 2002
In 1995, speaking at a conference held to celebrate the 100th birthday of the cinema, Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier gave a speech in which he decried the increased technical sophistication of filmmaking, which he believed had come at the expense of the art of storytelling. Von Trier declared that the cinema needed to be "purified," and in collaboration with fellow directors Thomas Vinterberg, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, and Kristian Levring, announced the birth of the Dogme 95 movement, a stylistic "vow of chastity" in which filmmakers would refrain from using sets, special effects, music that does not originate onscreen, and special lighting beyond what is normally available, and shoot all films with handheld cameras, using the original 1.33:1 Academy ratio. While the Dogme 95 filmmakers and their works gained international attention, they also found themselves struggling with the ascetic stylistic approach they had embraced, and some found themselves violating the rules they helped to create, while others wondered how their fellow filmmakers were to enforce their regulations. Jesper Jargil takes a witty look at the Dogme 95 filmmakers and their credo in The Purified, which examines the excesses which helped inspire the movement, how the Dogme theorists hoped to challenge them, and how the world reacted to them (and they to the world). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, (more)
This Danish comedy drama won the Jury Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. It opens in rural Denmark as family members assemble for the 60th birthday celebration of patriarch Helge (Henning Moritzen). At the family estate are Helge's children: France-based restaurateur Christian (Ulrich Thomsen), whose twin sister killed herself; surviving sister Helene (Paprika Steen); and younger brother Michael (Thomas Bo Larsen), married with three children. At the birthday dinner, the bitter Christian stands to deliver a toast -- but instead makes a startling speech accusing Helge of sexual abuse involving both twins. Following principles outlined in 1995 by Danish fimmakers in their Dogme 95 proclamation, this film adheres to their manifesto guidelines of handheld cameras, direct sound, location filming, and the elimination of technical tricks. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ulrich Thomsen, Henning Moritzen, (more)
