The unquiet twin spirits of Fritz Lang and Franz Kafka preside over Europa, Lars von Trier's sardonic, saturnine vision of just-post-WWII Germany. In 1945 Leo Kessler, a young American of German descent, returns to the shattered land of his forebears to help in its reconstruction. Through his uncle, who works for the huge railway network Zentropa, he gets a job as a trainee sleeping-car conductor and also meets the seductive Katharina Hartmann, daughter of Zentropa's owner Max. But acts of sabotage and murder are being planned by unregenerate young Nazis calling themselves... Werewolves, and very soon Leo's hapless innocent abroad starts finding out that, in this time and place of shifting loyalties, nothing and no one are what they seem. As if to accentuate this mood of nervous ambiguity, von Trier constantly switches from black and white to colour, and from English to (subtitled) German dialogue, often right in the middle of a scene. The cast boasts several iconic figures of European cinema, including Barbara Sukowa (a Fassbinder favourite) as femme fatale Katharina, and Eddie Constantine (from Godard's Alphaville) as a manipulative American colonel, while a literally hypnotic voice-over is spoken by the great Bergman actor Max von Sydow. There's more than a hint that von Trier intends a mischievous side-glance at today's Europe, and today's European film industry, in resentful thrall to the might of Hollywood. And while Europa is gripping and richly atmospheric, it's never without humour. The long, final episode is a tour de force of tragicomedy, with poor Leo juggling the competing demands of love and loyalty, life and death, while being harassed by his uncle who, horrified that Leo has lost his official peaked cap, forces him to wear a knotted handkerchief on his head, as well as by a pair of punctilious railroad inspectors demanding to know how long it takes him to make up a sleeping-car bunk. Lang and Kafka, sure, but maybe a touch of the Marx Brothers, too. --Philip Kemp [show more]
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Lars von Trier's bizarre yarn concerns Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr), a German American who becomes involved in a surreal nightmare in postwar Germany. Leopold travels to Germany in order to help restore the ravaged countryside. His uncle (Ernst-Hugo Jaregard) gets him a job as a sleeping-car conductor with a giant railway complex called Zentropa. On his first day, Leopold is seduced by Katharina Hartmann (Barbara Sukowa), who just so happens to be the daughter of Zentropa's owner. Leopold blindly falls for Katharina, unaware that she is about to draw him into a maze of suspense and intrigue involving pro-Nazi terrorists. Opening with a hypnotizing image of rolling train tracks and a somber voice-over by Max Von Sydow, ZENTROPA unfolds calculatedly and ambiguously. Von Trier employs a series of ingenious technical tricks, using rear projection as well as cutting between color and black and white, in order to give his film a dazzling visual presentation. The result is a mysterious thriller that will beg for a second viewing once the final credits have rolled.
At the end of WWII, a young German-American named Leo (Jean-Marc Barr) goes to Germany to help rebuild the country. Working as a train conductor, he witnesses the cruel treatment of Germans by Allied soldiers and the horrendous destruction brought about by the war (his train stops at towns that no longer exist). Eventually he becomes involved with the railroad boss's daughter, herself an ex-Nazi partisan.
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