På hvis skuldre

I do really love Lars von Trier so much, the most serious but the most tricksterish of all filmmakers, and above all the most courageous. He probably also has the greatest cultural knowledge of any filmmaker, and this is amply on display in this captivating documentary made by his daughter Agnes Trier, who is also the interviewer. When, in August 2022, I was with Anne Alombert and by chance met Gaspar Noé at Brasserie le Tambour in Paris, I told him that there are only two working directors with courage and whose films I really cared about seeing, and that he is one of them: he asked me who the other one is, and I said “von Trier”, and he replied that he had been hoping that’s who I would say. I meant what I said, and I was very happy with Noé’s response, but in truth Lars is in a category all his own. Here, in addition to what he says about the artworks he has curated for the exhibition, the comments he makes about immersing oneself, about persistence, about succeeding because he is an idiot, and many other things, all stand as testimony to the fact that he is the greatest living filmmaker and very probably the greatest living artist of any kind.