Politics as Form in Lars von Trier: A Post-Brechtian Reading

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This is the first study that employs a materialist framework to discuss the political implications of form in the films of Lars von Trier. Focusing mainly on early films, Politics as Form in Lars von Trier identifies recurring formal elements in von Triers oeuvre and discusses the formal complexity of his films under the rubric of the post-Brechtian. Through an in depth formal analysis, the book shows that Brecht is more important to von Triers work than what most critics seem to acknowledge and deems von Trier as a dialectical filmmaker. This study draws on many untranslated resources and features an interview with Lars von Trier, and another one with his mentor the great Danish director Jrgen Leth.

Reviews

Koutsourakis's examination of the often-examined Lars von Trier is refreshing for a couple of reasons. First, Koutsourakis (research fellow, Centre for Modernism Studies, Univ. of New South Wales, Australia) foregoes biographical attention to von Trier the man in the interest of restoring focus on the formal complexities of the films themselves. Second, Koutsourakis interprets the films through a postmodern rethinking of Bertolt Brecht, and he dedicates the first chapter, 50 pages or so, to Brecht and defining "post-Brechtian"--which should interest scholars of theater, performance studies, and contemporary cinema. The book is strongly argued and will prove useful to those interested in von Trier. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. -- J. Sundquist, Eastern Washington University * CHOICE *
[Koutsourakis] contributes generatively to the way in which Brecht might be applied within film studies as he evaluates Brechts own writing on cinema and illuminates concepts beyond the Verfremdungseffekt (the process of making the familiar strange). Koutsourakis book is thus a welcome development that expands scholarship on von Trier beyond the framework of Extreme Cinema within which his work is frequently placed ... A highly valuable contribution to work on von Trier. * Studies in European Cinema *
From Brechtian to Post-Brechtian: Koutsourakis moves beyond the mere allegorical readings of the films' content and challenges the simplistic dichotomies that traditionally [restricted] von Trier's Brechtianism [...] Unlike other books on von Trier . . . this richly illustrated study pushes the analysis to reveal von Trier's multiple connections with the avante-garde and Italian Neo-Realism, also including interviews with the director and his mentor Jorgen Leth. -- Sara Morino, University of Westminster, UK * Cinema Journal *
Koutsourakiss study succeeds in two ways. It identifies the political dimension of Brechts artistic practice not in his Marxist ideology or modernist devices but in his aesthetics of negation. Second, it positions von Trier in this tradition as a post-Brechtian filmmaker whose experimental and irritating productions like Brechts politicize the audiences perception of history and the present through their formal properties of radical negation. Unlike many books on von Trier, this richly illustrated study, including interviews and relevant documents, pushes far beyond the biographical into the media and representational aesthetics that distinguish this body of challenging films. * Marc Silberman, Professor, Department of German, and Director, Director, Center for German and European Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA *
In his book, Angelos Kousourakis takes a new and innovative look at the cinema of Lars von Trier. Using Bertolt Brechts theories as a key, he analyses the political and ideological aspects of Lars von Triers oeuvre with sharp intellectual energy. In Koutsourakiss reading, Triers radicalism is made visible: Lars von Trier as a revolutionary! * Peter Schepelern, Associate Professor, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark *
Angelos Koutsourakiss stimulating and thought-provoking monograph on Lars von Trier presents the Danish director as a political filmmaker in the Brechtian tradition. In addition to offering a sophisticated and stimulating analysis of the political aspects of Lars von Triers films, the monograph also has a number of other qualities that make it an essential read for anyone interested in Lars von Trier. It revalorises von Triers early films and discusses a number of his lesser-known projects (such as the unfinished, and now aborted, Dimension project); it introduces material to which only Danish readers have previously had access, and it includes Koutsourakiss own interviews with Lars von Trier and Jrgen Leth. Finally, like Bainbridge, Koutsourakis presents a number of von Triers manifestos from 1984 to 2001, giving the reader a lot of material to engage with dialectically or not. -- Nikolaj Lubecker * New Review of Film and Television Studies *

Author Bio

Angelos Koutsourakis is the author of Politics as Form in Lars von Trier (Bloomsbury, 2013, 2016) and the co-editor of The Cinema of Theo Angelopoulos (2015). His work has appeared in Cinema Journal, Film Criticism, SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism, Monatshefte fr deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Image and Narrative, Studies in European Cinema, Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, and many more. His next book Rethinking Brechtian Film Theory and Cinema (2018).