bad lieutenant: versus

The relationship between Abel Ferrara's (1992) Bad Lieutenant and Werner Herzog's (2009) Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is highly ambiguous. Reportedly, Ferrara hated the 2009 version, and Herzog didn't even see the original.

As far as I can tell, Port of Call is the first produced feature script by a TV writer, although on imdb they've credited all four writers of the original as well, perhaps because there are so many plot / thematic similarities between the two movies.

Both "bad lieutenants" (i) take drugs; (ii) gamble; (iii) abuse their authority to obtain drugs; (iv) abuse their authority to obtain sexual favors; but also (v) do actually care about their role as homicide investigators and pursue it vigorously.

Additionally, the arc of both movies is similar, with a traumatic event haunting the lieutenant (original: massive gambling debt accruing as the Mets come from behind to beat the Dodgers in a seven game series; Port of Call: constant pain due to an injury suffered during Hurricane Katrina) as he relentlessly investigates a horrendous case (original: Nun raped in a church by young hoodlums; Port of Call: immigrant family slaughtered by drug lords).

Both films bear the distinctive stylistic marks of their respective directors.

But one can see the origins of Ferrara's hatred of the Herzog not-really-a-sequel, perhaps, in the radically different messages of the two films.

Ferrara's is a complex Catholic passion play. In his quest to solve the rape / desecration case, the lieutenant (re)discovers the significance of sacrifice and forgiveness in the attitude of the nun, who refuses to identifier her assailants because she has already forgiven them. Ultimately, promising her the justice she wants, he discovers their identities, but helps them escape, thereby sacrificing his own life in the process. Redemption through sacrifice and forgiveness.

Herzog's version is completely stripped of religious imagery or significance. Instead we see the images of violent nature and chaotic forces common in so many other Herzog films. Where Ferrara's lieutenant sees images of Christ's suffering on the cross, Herzog's sees phantom iguanas and break-dancing Japanese. Where Ferrara's lieutenant "solves" his case by helping the criminals escape and sacrificing his own life, Herzog's sees a bizarre twist in fortune, and arrests his criminals on phony evidence, though preventing his partner from slaughtering them on the spot, instead trusting the due process of law to see right. There is redemption here, but redemption through a combination of chance, diligence, and assistance from others.

So, Ferrara's message is quintessentially Catholic, while Herzog's is resolutely humanistic. Unsurprising, perhaps, given Ferrara's Catholic upbringing and Herzog's chaotic youth during World War II.

von trier: antichrist

Nature is Satan's Church
The work of Lars von Trier breaks roughly into three periods.

In the first, Trier makes extensive use of cinematic tricks to create an overall aesthetic effect. This is the period of The Element of Crime, Epidemic, and Europa. Rear projection, filters, slow motion, and self referential production effects shape the look of these films. They address the very abstract topic of Europe, its history and decay.

Following his mother's deathbed revelation about his true parentage, von Trier's style shifted dramatically to a focus on naturalistic acting and a handheld, pseudo-documentary style. Breaking the Waves initiated this trend, though it also maintained some of Trier's earlier, self-conscious stylings—the lush chapter headings, for example. The style was pushed to a new extreme in Trier's legitimate (The Idiots) and bastardized musical (Dancer in the Dark) installments in the Dogme95 genre.

Although the U.S. trilogy appears a break with the Dogme style (artificial lighting, sets, etc. are reintroduced with a vengeance), the verite camerawork and sparse style remain. In fact, the strict aesthetic of Dogville and Manderlay represents an even more rigid discipline than the 10 punishing rules of the Dogme "vow of chastity." This third style, then, though distinct is, if anything, a claustrophobic extension of the second.

With Antichrist, however, Trier seems to finally stumble towards a reconciliation between the stylistic indulgence of his early period and the harsh austerity of more recent works. The acting is intense, personal, and claustrophobic; the theme is again the do-gooder whose best intentions produce only pain and evil—the hallmarks of post-Waves Trier. No longer, however, does Trier's aesthetic discipline force itself on the viewer. The use of film tricks—color adjustment, slow motion, animatronics—returns. Unlike Trier's early period, however, these tricks serve and enhance the story and the acting, rather than simply overshadowing them.

The film ends with a dedication to Tarkovsky, whose influence clearly dominates the lush and beautiful nature photography (not to mention the extreme slow motion shots). The attitude towards nature in Antichrist is nothing like that of Tarkovsky, however, whose indulgent and worshipful attitude towards nature and the wild famously warped his version of Lem's Solaris from a story of discovery and wonder into one of nostalgia and romance. No, Trier's attitude is much more akin to that of Herzog, as expressed in Burden of Dreams:

Full of obscenity . . . nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here, I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away . . . The trees here are in misery and the birds are in misery; I don't think they sing, they just screech in pain.

Ultimately, though, Antichrist is about people and the evil that they do—nature reflects and symbolizes that evil but, much as we desperately wish it to be the case, nature is not the cause. It is only us who are to blame for our sins.

Ever since Breaking the Waves, Trier has been accused of misogyny. Waves, Dancer, Dogville, and Manderlay all revolve around naive and well-meaning female characters who are forced to endure a sequence of cruel and degrading public punishments and indignities—in some cases climaxing with the character's death—all toward the supposed end of their pristine intentions. Usually, the perpetrators of these public cruelties were men, and the interpretation of Trier as misogynist on the basis of these stories seemed reactionary and misguided. Yet, with Antichrist, these concerns emerge more strikingly than ever before. Once again suffering and pain are inflicted, but no longer is the female victim innocent and virtuous. Of course, she's also no longer a mere victim either, but an active participant in the games of torture and degradation.

Still, it would be foolish to judge Antichrist as merely the product of misogyny and a simple-minded hatred of psychiatrists. For the evil that men do is that much more evil when its source is ambiguous and not mere misguided virtue, even if virtue for von Trier is always revealed as the mere semblance of virtue in any but the disabled. Furthermore, adding complexity and moral ambiguity to the motivations of the female protagonist deepens and enriches the role of the male protagonist. The recurring "Golden Heart" motif in Trier's work reaches a new level of sophistication (and moral gray) in Antichrist for precisely these reasons.