My own manifesto

So last week for my film history class, we read Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg’s “Vow of Chastity” and “Vow of Chastity Rules.” Now, for those of you unfamiliar with Dogme 95 (which, I’m assuming, is the majority of people who have never been forced to learn about it in film school) basically it’s a list of strict rules that must be followed in order for a movie to be “real,” or “pure” cinema. An excerpt of said rules:

I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by DOGMA 95:

1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot.)
3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted.
4. The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera.)
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10. The director must not be credited.

Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a "work", as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations.

…Yeah. Okay.

Now, here’s the thing. We actually watched a Dogme 95 film, The Celebration, and believe it or not it was actually pretty damn good. I liked the style. I’ve always liked stripped-down, “indie” aesthetics every bit as much as I love the classic, big-budget Hollywood style. I’m one of those weird-ass people who will sit through Django Unchained, then go home and watch Twilight or Juno just for kicks. (So far my weirdest double feature to date is Tim Burton’s Big Fish back-to-back with Legally Blonde, which I chased with an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos.) Point is, yes, I detest Von Trier but, as I discovered this past week, I do not, as it turns out, detest Vinterberg.

But those rules! Good God! Can we talk about those rules for a second? So restrictive. So intense. Holy crap, they even recognize right there in the rulebook how restrictive they’re being with their movies--they call it chastity, for Pete’s sake! Lord above, I could write a blog post on that alone. As if all the other movies who didn’t follow their rules were...dare I say it?...slutty.

Look, I understand that Dogme 95 is an important movement and it’s in reaction to the big-budget commercial films of the early 90s. I get that. And I understand that there are plenty of people out there who are not like me, who do not like the shiny Hollywood look as much as the gritty indie look, who absolutely despise the shiny Hollywood look and want to kill it with fire. I understand all of that just fine. And I applaud Vinterberg and Von Trier (I hate that I just said “I applaud Von Trier” in any context, but credit where credit is due) for having the balls to say, “The hell with this, let’s do something no one’s ever done before. Let’s strip that down and make it right.”

But…

But…

Well, but...when you make up a list of rules and force yourself to stick to them, simply for the sake of sticking to the rules that you yourself imposed, it gets pretty damn limiting.

And I don’t like limiting.

Here’s what I loved about The Celebration: that movie was not afraid to, excuse my language, let you know how many flying fucks it did not give about whether you liked it or not. It had the aesthetic of a found footage movie without the gimmicks. And it was a thing of absolute beauty simply because it didn’t preach, didn’t command, didn’t get all fussed about making a statement. It was like, here, take these characters, love them or hate them, but just watch them and see where this goes.

In short, it was everything that Von Trier’s subsequent work was not. Don’t believe me? Watch Antichrist (or, if you have the slightest shred of self-preservation, don’t) and tell me that movie follows those rules he wrote and swore to follow. Watch Dogville and tell me it’s not the most pretentious piece of work you’ve ever seen. Watch Melancholia and...actually, Melancholia didn’t suck. (Actually, it was pretty decent. But don’t tell Von Trier I said that.) But I’ve made my point. Von Trier wrote the rules and then proceeded to indiscriminately break all of them, yet he continues to act like he’s the shit because he has, in the objective sense, a talent for filmmaking. And that, when you get down to it, is really what fries my cheese concerning Von Trier: he acts like he’s above everyone else, and then he doesn’t even follow his own damn rules.

And yet Dogme 95 is still incredibly interesting to me and I can’t put my finger on the reason why. Maybe because it inspired so much of the independent cinema I know and love today. Maybe because without this movement we wouldn’t have Jimmy and Judy or, hell, even the silly ones like Funny Ha Ha or Hannah Takes the Stairs where you just sit and watch and wonder Jesus Christ is this movie ever going to go anywhere or develop anything vaguely resembling a freaking plot. Maybe because I find it so restrictive and so interesting and so weird. I doubt I’ll ever even attempt a film that would meet the Dogme 95 standards. But hell, maybe one day I’ll try, who knows?

But in the meantime...with all that being said, here’s my own vow. My manifesto. You know...my rules.

Here and now I promise, as a filmmaker, that I will never try to break ground for the sake of breaking ground. I won’t be purposefully “artsy” or throw in moments of shock just to get attention. I’ll write my own films, as often as I can. And for the love of God, someone smack me if I ever even think about making anything that resembles a Michael Bay film.

I promise I’ll make movies that follow a story. A real story. A real story, about real people. I won’t say now that I’ll never do a blockbuster--in this day and age, who the hell knows?--but I won’t make one just so I can say I’ve done it. I will never, ever make a movie that I can’t connect to on an emotional level, because if I can’t, God knows my audience won’t be able to.

I promise, in short, to stay myself. And in an industry motivated by fear, I know that’s even more difficult than meeting Von Trier and Vinterberg’s exacting standards.