THE ELEMENT OF CRIME

Denmark, 1984, 104 minutes. Colour/Black and white (tinted).
Michael Elphick, Esmond Knight, Me Me Lai, Jerold Wells.
Directed by Lars von Trier.

The Element of Crime is one of Lars von Trier’s earliest films. It is interesting to look at this film in the retrospect of Epidemic and Europa, which he considered the next two episodes in a trilogy about Europe of the future. During the 1990s he made a number of films and television series including Breaking the Waves. He won the Palme d'Or in Cannes in 2000 for Dancer in the Dark. After that he created a number of controversial films including Dogville, Manderay, Antichrist and Melancholia.

The film has a distinctive visual style, von Trier experimenting with images and colour and photographic techniques to indicate a state of mind.

The film focuses on a detective who has been working in Cairo, returning home, being given investigation by his mentor who had written a book The Element of Crime, and undergoing hypnotic therapy. The setting is the future. Lars von Trier has followed the intricacies of the human mind for many decades, dramatising them in offbeat films.

1. The impact of the film, audience interest, enjoyment, the use of the cinema medium? Experimental?

2. The use of colour, tinted black and white, browns and yellows, glimpses of blue? The glow and the murkiness? Growing clarity? Final colour? The effect for the audience? The landscapes of the mind, of reality? The compositions, focus? People and groups, reversal, upside down, movement, shock? Stunt work?

3. The musical score and its contribution to the atmosphere?

4. The voice-over, the commentary, the psychological dimensions?

5. The journey of the psyche, to gain clarity, to understand identity and sanity? Going back to roots, training, self-esteem? Fisher identifying himself? His relationship with Osborne? Osborne as mentor, his book? The killer, the investigation? Truth and verification?

6. Cairo as a place, hot, the desert, a psychological landscape, the donkey and the dust? The contrast with Europe, the European atmosphere?

7. Europe of the future, ugly, the devastation? Images from A Clockwork Orange? Industry, alienation, colour and lack of colour?

8. The use of symbols, the donkey, the dust, water, death, the hotels? The diver, bald, the water?

9. The blend of real situations, surreal? Which was which?

10. Fisher and Europe, his exile, Cairo, his psychological disintegration? The role of the psychologist? The nature of the therapy? Comment, questions? Help for Fisher? Fisher as helpless?

11. His return, meeting Osborne, old, Osborne’s sanity? The emptiness of his life, truth and lies? The book, reality, a guide, fiction? The relationship, child, wife? The killer and the dossier? The clashes with Kramer? Identifying Harry Gray, following him, verifying his identity? Death? The death of the theory?

12. Kramer and his men, orders, bald, rough, sneering, pragmatic? The vindication?

13. Fisher in himself, as a person, the past with Osborne, his personal search, illness and aches, Kramer? Harry Gray, victims, the Lotto, the element of crime? Detective work, following and identifying? Kim, the relationship? Diagrams and theories? Tracing the course for Gray? The girl as a lure, the identification for the killing? Harry Gray as a criminal?

14. Kim, accompanying Fisher, reliving the situation, victim, escape?

15. The Lotto, the scheme, the victims?

16. A final inner peace – uncovering the dark side? Moving into the outer world?