The Element of Crime
Before he decided camera trickery was actually a bad thing (in re his Dogme 95 movement), Lars von Trier couldn’t get enough of it as is evident in his first English language feature, The Element of Crime. A twisted tale of a cop who undergoes a hypnotic treatment in order to track down a serial killer of young girls, Crime is shot under almost exclusively red lighting, giving the impression that you are seeing the film through a haze of blood.
This is interesting for five minutes, but after 105 it gets tedious to an extreme. It also makes it extremely difficult to actually see what’s going on not only is everything red, but the whole film is shot at night and almost all of it in the rain.
Von Trier’s story is typically bleak and creepy, and had he opted for a more straightforward telling of it, the film would surely have been more successful. As it stands now, it’s an oddity that stands as a fair introduction to the work of cinema’s most curious auteur.
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