No one could accuse the Danish film director Lars von Trier of having opted for an easy, safe, or uncontroversial path through life. His films are full of dark surprises; anytime you feel calm and smug that you get what he's doing, that's just when he turns everything around on you. Sometimes this takes the form of grand sensation (for some examples, turn the page), sometimes great longueurs, sometimes painful and almost surreal sentimentality. His methods have often been unconventional (he co-founded the back-to-basics Dogme 95 movement though swiftly abandoned many of its tenets) and have sometimes taken their toll both on those he has worked with (after appearing in his Dancer in the Dark, Björk declared she would never act again) and on himself. He's not in the business of trying to make people feel comfortable.
But to be crystal clear right from the start—and in spite of the headlines he made this year when he was thrown out of the Cannes Film Festival after being accurately quoted as declaring "I'm a Nazi"—he is not a Nazi. He is in no way sympathetic with Nazi philosophy, nor with their most infamous acts.
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