The Element of Crime - Criterion Collection

The Element of Crime - Criterion Collection

The Element of Crime - Criterion Collection
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Duke Addabayo, Frederik Casby, Gotha Andersen, Jon Bang Carlsen, Maria Behrendt
Brand: Image Entertainment
Primary Contributor: Michael Elphick
Primary Contributor: Esmond Knight
DVD: 2 Layers, Region Code 1
Audio: Danish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 104 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-09-19
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion

Movie Reviews of The Element of Crime - Criterion Collection

Movie Review: "I want to wake up now. Are you there? You can wake me up now."
Summary: 3 Stars

Seen together, Lars Von Trier's Europa trilogy isn't exactly a profound experience, but it does underline the fact that even when he's boring he's never dull. Seen separately - The Element of Crime, Europa and Epidemic are only available together in a lavish European PAL 4-disc set, with Epidemic currently unavailable at all in the US - none of them should work and none of them do, yet on another there's an audacity to them that engages far more than the subject matter: at times, the hypnotic execution is more than enough to compensate for the narrative confusion. Indeed, the whole trilogy seems to be driven by dreams and trances. Element of Crime is a tale emotionlessly told by a detective under hypnosis, his lack of passion in his voice-over often mirrored by the artificiality of the performances and the dreamlike imagery of a burned out, waterlogged Europe that feels like one of the fevered headaches that consume him as he becomes the monster he is supposedly tracing down. Unfortunately it's wilfully inaccessible at times, which can make it a difficult viewing experience, and the oppressive decayed orange/sepia color scheme doesn't make the film any easier to get in to, yet its curiously hard to turn away from.


While it sadly fulls short of the comprehensive extras on the european 4-disc set, Criterion's disc does at least include a good 52-minute documentary on Von trier, Tranceformer.

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Summary of The Element of Crime - Criterion Collection

Lars von Trier's stunning debut film is the story of Fisher, an exiled ex-cop who returns to his old beat to catch a serial killer with a taste for young girls. Influenced equally by Hitchcock and science fiction, von Trier (Zentropa, Breaking the Waves, The Idiots) boldly reinvents expressionist style for his own cinematic vision of a post-apocalyptic world. Shot in shades of sepia, with occasional, startling flashes of bright blue, The Element of Crime (Forbrydelsens Element) combines dark mystery and operatic sweep to yield a pure celluloid nightmare.
It may prove confounding to anyone expecting a more conventional narrative, but The Element of Crime--the debut feature of Danish visionary Lars von Trier--marks the arrival of an audaciously original talent; the film is deeply personal in its inspirations yet richly informed by a pure love of cinema. Approaching a hard-boiled detective plot from a hypnotically subconscious perspective (thus establishing the tone he would echo in his later films Epidemic and Europa), von Trier presents a murder case solved from the inside out. Which is to say, the plot unfolds as recollected under hypnosis by Fisher (Michael Elphick), the grizzled cop who investigates the case.

This framework is arguably beside the point; it's merely von Trier's way of entering a post-apocalyptic world of his own making, flooded and decaying, and filmed entirely in an amber-tinted tone punctuated only by blue police lights and sickly green fluorescents. By following principles of crime solving conceived by his mentor (played by British film veteran Esmond Knight), Fisher closes in on an awful revelation that spins The Element of Crime into another psychological dimension. Multilayered, deliberately paced, and atmospheric in the extreme (which less appreciative viewers may find intolerable), The Element of Crime elicits a dream state that is simultaneously oppressive and visually unforgettable, crammed with symbolic subtleties and cinematic references that can only be fully absorbed over multiple viewings. To say the least, this is a film that grows on you. --Jeff Shannon

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