IndieWire
Lars von Trier is going to Hell. The devil, after all, has all the best tunes, and on the evidence of "Nymphomaniac Part 1," which has its world premiere in its unexpurgated, director-preferred 145-minute version at the Berlin Film Festival, von Trier is a maestro at his zenith, conducting what may very well be his magnum opus. It is a symphony, or perhaps a thrusting, punk-inflected heavy metal power grind of rude, funny, sexy, sad, gross, pretentious, meta and brilliant, and sometimes all of these things at the same time. But out of what should be discordant, salacious, self-indulgent and ugly, von Trier, through sheer storytelling and filmmaking chutzpah, has crafted something witty and clever and thrilling, that absorbed our attention like a sponge and displayed, beneath all that brio, a kind of wisdom we haven't seen before from the filmmaker. All while retaining his trademark irreverence and taboo-busting iconoclasm, of course. Now, given that 'Nymphomaniac" was #2 on our most anticipated films of the year list, it's not like it had no expectations to live up to, yet it soared up past all of them, delivering an incredibly rich, engaging, occasionally challenging film whose 145 minutes flew by, culminating in an ending that in itself delivered such a clever, jolting cliffhanger, that it nearly made the decision to split it into two films completely forgivable. Except for the fact that we're so utterly gagging for more right now that 'Vol II' can't come quickly enough.
This week we have several great additions to the lexicon of Blu-ray and DVD. Read on for our selection of the week and the run down.
More audacious than volume one, mostly because of von Trier’s willingness to delve into the darker, often unexplored recesses of the mind.
Full review by Chris Pandolfi.
Provocative in ways more complex than the title suggests; the graphic sexuality is not as shocking as what the central character thinks and feels.
Full review by Chris Pandolfi.
