The Lighter Side of Lars von Trier

Danish director Lars von Trier is best known for his depressing movies, minimalist shooting style and fear of flying. But von Trier recently entered his 50s, and he’s a new man. He put a computer in charge of the camera on his latest film, the comedy The Boss of it All. He gave up his usual Cannes premieres in favor of a quiet opening at the obscure Copenhagen Film Festival. And he is determined to learn how to fly a helicopter.

“I just turned 50, and I thought it was time to do what I really wanted,” von Trier says at his headquarters, a former military barracks in Copenhagen.

The Boss of it All is set in the drab offices of a Danish IT company whose owner invents a fictitious boss on whom to blame unpopular decisions. The scheme backfires when he wants to sell the firm to a rude and abusive Icelander who insists on negotiating directly with the top man. So the owner hires a down-on-his-luck actor to keep the ruse going.

It’s von Trier’s first attempt at humor since The Idiots and a marked departure from more somber works like Dancer in the Dark, the top prize winner at Cannes in 2000, and Dogville with Nicole Kidman.

“Depressing films are great fun to do,” von Trier says. “But this comedy was very easy, production-wise. I was trying to do a tight little shallow film. Audiences will never find it as funny as I did, but I was quite content at a couple of screenings.” As for critics, that’s another story.

“The Danish reviews were extremely bad,” von Trier says. “I think they would’ve probably treated me better if I’d shown the same film in Cannes.”

For The Boss of it All, von Trier developed a new filming technique he calls Automavision. Once he chooses the camera’s position, a computer decides how much it will pan, tilt or change exposure. “At first,” von Trier says, “the actors laughed very much and very long, but then they got used to it.”

Maybe now von Trier himself will get used to something new: flying. “I am now flying remote-control helicopters, so I thought that I should one day try a real helicopter,” he says. “I will only try it once—where the instructor beside me also has controls.”