OPEN
HEARTS (2002,
Please answer the following questions and answer three at length.
1. Consider the film’s title. What does it signify?
2. The film opens with a romantic dinner for Cecilie and Joachim. What is established in this scene?
3. We don’t get a similar scene for Niels and his family—i.e., a scene giving us a sense of the family’s “status quo” before the traumatic event occurs. So, we must reconstruct that family’s prior status quo after the fact. Do so. What was going on in this family before the accident occurred?
4. What can you say about the way that Joachim reacts to his accident? Does it seem real to you, or over the top? Discuss this character’s trajectory.
5. Now do the same for Niels. What is it that attracts him to Cecilie? How do you feel about him? Does he come across as believable? What motivates him?
6. How about Cecilie? What motivates her? What is it that attracts her to Niels?
7. Finally, how about Marie? What kind of person is she? Do you find her reaction to events to be believable?
8. What role does Stine play in the film? How about Finn, Niels’ colleague?
9. What do you think of the film’s ending? Where are we at the end in terms of the relationships? What do you think will happen next?
10. Do you find the film’s portrayal of a family breakup to be realistic? Give some examples.
11. Open
Hearts was made under the austere, self-imposed restraints of the “Dogma
95” movement. A somewhat tongue-in-cheek
project initiated by the Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier
and Thomas Vinterberg in the mid-1990s,
it sought to follow in the footsteps of the great French New Wave filmmakers of
the late Fifties in combining a profound love of cinema with a desire to thumb
their noses at the cinematic establishment and the powers-that-be.
They decided that they wanted to
test the limits of the medium by imposing severe restraints upon themselves as
filmmakers (what they called THE VOW OF CHASTITY): no special effects, no fancy camerawork, the
camera always handheld, no discursive soundtracks (all music had to be diegetic, part of the story), no special lighting, all
films shot on location with no changes to the props or décor allowed, no
flashbacks, no gratuitous violence, no reliance on genre.
They believed that they could
make compelling and memorable films despite these restraints—in some ways,
perhaps, because of the restraints.
Do you find this style to
be effective in Open Hearts? Discuss and give examples.
12. Look at the 10 elements of Dogma 95’s “Vow of Chastity” below. To what extent does Open Hearts adhere to the dictates of the movement?
13. What, if anything, is the filmmaker saying about the adulterous affair that we have here? What point(s) do you think the filmmaker is trying to make with this film?
DOGMA 95
DOGMA 95 is a collective of film directors founded in
DOGMA 95 is a rescue action!
In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not! The new wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck.
Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for a while, but no changes. The wave was up for grabs, like the directors themselves. The wave was never stronger than the men behind it. The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby ... false!
To DOGMA 95 cinema is not individual!
Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be the ultimate democratisation of the cinema. For the first time, anyone can make movies. But the more accessible the media becomes, the more important the avant-garde. It is no accident that the phrase “avant-garde” has military connotations. Discipline is the answer ... we must put our films into uniform, because the individual film will be decadent by definition!
DOGMA 95 counters the individual film by the principle of presenting an indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHASTITY.
In 1960 enough was enough! The movie had been cosmeticised to death, they said; yet since then the use of cosmetics has exploded.
The “supreme” task of the decadent film-makers is to fool the audience. Is that what we are so proud of? Is that what the “100 years” have brought us? Illusions via which emotions can be communicated? ... By the individual artist’s free choice of trickery?
Predictability (dramaturgy) has become the golden calf around which we dance. Having the characters’ inner lives justify the plot is too complicated, and not “high art”. As never before, the superficial action and the superficial movie are receiving all the praise. The result is barren. An illusion of pathos and an illusion of love.
To DOGMA 95 the movie is not illusion!
Today a technological storm is raging of which the result is the elevation of cosmetics to God. By using new technology anyone at any time can wash the last grains of truth away in the deadly embrace of sensation. The illusions are everything the movie can hide behind.
DOGMA 95 counters the film of illusion by the presentation of an indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHASTITY.
THE VOW OF CHASTITY
I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by Dogme 95:
1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. (If a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.)
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the image or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot.)
3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place.)
4. The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure, the scene must be cut or a single lamp [must] be attached to the camera.)
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10. The director must not be credited.
Furthermore, I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a 'work,' as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations."
Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY
On behalf of DOGMA 95,
Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg
Source: www.dogme95.dk