IMDB Top 250: #238 – The Celebration

250 films, 250 reviews. This is a pretty crazy idea, but who doesn’t love a challenge? Here at Cultured Vultures we’ll be counting down the IMDb Top 250 with a review for each from one of our dedicated film writers. Everything from Goodfellas to Casablanca will be covered over the next year or so for you film lovers to enjoy. You can’t say we don’t spoil you, you lovely lot. – Ashley, Project Lead

Even when Lars Von Trier first brought his radical Dogme 95 manifesto to bear, hoping to create some cinematic counterpart to Brecht’s ‘epic theatre’, critics predicted that it would be a flash in the pan. In some ways, they were right, only a handful of films were ever produced in the style (with varying levels of dedication) and only two have really been welcomed into the annals of cinematic history (this film and Von Trier’s own The Idiots). Having said that, the movement’s influence can still be felt in screen drama to this day and no film is more directly responsible for that than the very first one, Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (The Celebration in English, but the Danish title is so much more fitting).

Vinterberg was only 5 years out of film school when he set to work on this production, buoyed by this new, stripped down film-making mold set in place by Von Trier. But he didn’t set out to make something that would defy the rigors of modern cinema, or colour outside the lines, he set out to make an enthralling, enraging, visceral piece of character drama and my god did he succeed. The celebration in question is the 60th birthday of Helge, a wealthy patriarch holed in a stately Danish country hotel. His children, relatives and life long friends all turn out for the event and even before the party starts you can smell the bullshit twisting in the air. His youngest son, a drunken, misogynistic fiend named Michael drives furiously towards the house screaming at his wife for no good reason before seeing his older brother Christian walking down the same road and making his wife and children walk the rest of the way so that he can give his brother a lift. Not a great start.

Once the pair arrive and reunite with Helene, their sister, things don’t get any warmer. The three of them sit beneath the looming shadow of their other sibling, the recently deceased Linda, who committed suicide in the aged family home far too recently for the shock to have fully subsided. Almost immediately, upon a mournful search of the room she died in, Helene finds her suicide note and it becomes clear that the house is indeed haunted, but by something far more sinister than lingering memories of a passed loved one. At this point, as the party is kicking into life, you think you have an idea of where this film is going, the party will begin amicably, but as more wine works its way through people’s systems, old grievances will re-emerge and things will get ugly. That’s not how it goes down.

Almost immediately, directly following his father’s opening speech, Christian stands up to give a toast which he bookends by dragging out his father’s dusty closet, ripping the door off and sending all the skeletons rattling across the dining room floor (figuratively). The revelations are horrifying, if true. Initially the room sits frozen in excruciating silence, but little by little the party shivers back into life. People assume he must have been joking, exaggerating, vying for attention, Christian was a weird kid, after all. But he doesn’t stop, again he stands and again he accuses his father of appalling, monstrous things, somewhat at the behest of the head chef, who has his staff hide all the guest’s car keys and cut the line to the taxi office so that none of them can escape.

This sets a vicious cycle of denial and fury into motion. Time after time Christian goes on the offensive as more and more people try and temper the chaos. Helena assures the guests he’s lying, the grandfather regales the party with the same funny story over and over, the grandmother sings and the mother desperately appeals to Christian to apologize, but he turns on her next, claiming she knew all about it and did nothing. It’s this slight that finally gets him kicked out as a drunken, rueful Michael drags him out of the house and ties him to a tree. It’s too late by then, though. Even as the stately, smartly dressed guests laugh and dine an atmosphere of disgust lingers over the party and all the old issues bubble up. Things hit a particularly rancid fever pitch when Michael squabbles with Helena’s African-American boyfriend (who doesn’t speak a word of Danish) and begins chanting some old racist shanty. That’s bad enough by itself, but then the whole fucking room joins in.

Finally, with Christian having fought his way back, it all comes to a head, Helene reads out her sister’s suicide note and the truth of it all becomes inescapable. Christian is overcome with emotion almost to the point of implosion and a drunker-still Michael storms into the night to confront his hiding father, by any means necessary. Yet somehow, the next morning, they all sit down for breakfast. The Dogme style, far from being pervasive, makes this austere, farcical massacre even more painful to watch, we’re offered no music, sweeping cinematography or any other stylistic respite from the unpleasantness. The performances are phenomenal across the board with Ulrich Thomsen (who some might recognise as Kai from the Banshee series) remaining the consistent standout as the quietly damaged and defiant Christian.

Vinterberg returned to similar subject matter with 2012’s The Hunt, a film which I prefer to this one because it has more important things to say, but thematically the way both stories deal with ugliness lurking so close beneath the stately, patrician surface is masterful, and rage inducing. I’ve never been in a fight in my life but if I’d been at the party I would have ended up punching at least 3 people, if not more. The ultimate truth of it is that so much of this idealised, upstanding vision of humanity is built on a foundation of lies. Festen has since been hailed as a Danish classic and even ended up on the West End, Broadway and even an Australian version surfaced starring (and I still can’t quite believe this) Jason Donovan as Christian. It’s ‘car crash cinema’ at its finest, manipulating the twisted appeal of voyeurism until you find yourself transfixed by a waking nightmare.

Note: the IMDb Top 250 Cultured Vultures are using is based on the standings from the 16th of November. Inconsistencies may apply.

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