The Idiots (1998)

This controversial Dogme 95 comedy-drama creates a uniquely unsettling experience through its rejection of artifice and naturalistic performances. The disturbing content is balanced by emotionally engaging situations and an ultimately liberating message.

The Dogma 95 experiment is consistently intriguing and involving in its satirical look at performance and how society treats outsiders, though it never quite delivers emotionally or intellectually and is marred by visible crew distractions.

The film is a fascinating folly with glimmers of genius, its guerrilla Dogma 95 style fitting its theme of social deviance and 'spassing'. It troubles with a banal inner-child message and an overly tidy ending that undercuts the preceding chaos.

The film is a bizarre black comedy about a commune pretending to have disabilities to shock bourgeois society, made under Dogme 95 rules. It has some grotesque laughs but feels tiresome, puerile and lacking in coherence or real insight.

Mars-Jones criticizes the Dogme 95 manifesto as a gimmick and finds The Idiots a less successful demonstration than Festen, arguing it fails to force truth from its characters and ends with manipulation. He suggests von Trier abandon the rules for proper filmmaking, while noting his earlier success with Breaking the Waves.

The film uses Dogma techniques to produce discomfort in the audience, which it presents as a political act, but has little else on its mind beyond squirming provocation through public 'spassing' antics.

The critic finds the film's premise horribly misguided and its execution even worse, resulting in a work that primarily inspires boredom rather than outrage or engagement.

The film is a disturbing, provocative work from a true original, exploring normalcy through a commune's embrace of their 'inner idiot.' It features moments of dramatic intensity but its obscure thesis and raw approach limit it to the arthouse market.

The film has no recognisable storyline and its emotional potential is undermined by a rigid attitude toward manipulation. The handheld Dogme 95 style creates immediacy that ultimately pushes viewers away rather than drawing them in.