Celebration

[The following is the scipt on which I base my lecture on "The Celebration - Modern Aesthetics and Traditional Drama"]

If you look at the title and the description of this lecture, you'll read the following:

I am very well aware that I reveal the basic plot of The Celebration, the film you're going to see this Saturday. I felt I couldn't refrain from doing so. Talking about one film for three hours pretending not to know the film's story is beyond my capabilities.

As for you, you'll have to live with the fact for a few days, that you know what the film is about. You must remember that enlisting for this course you turned from non-professionals into professionals in the film studies business. And professionalt know the stories. They even claim that they are able to take their experience with any particular film to a higher level when they know the story - including the ending. Knowing the story and the ending frees them from the tyranny of the plot and allows them to study the films cinematic language more closely. What I'm doing here today is not spoiling your Saturday's time with The Celebration. It is enriching that experience. That is at least what I hope to do.

When I was here last time I spoke for about an hour about the Dogma-movement and especially about the films of Lars von Trier. I'm sure that last weeks lecturer, Peter Schepelern, also devoted a few minutes to the Dogma/Trier thing.

But if you take a closer look at the original version of the Dogma manifesto it was signed not only by Lars von Trier - but also by a certain Thomas Vinterberg. He happened to become the first to theatrically release his Dogma-film, and thus The Celebration is the Dogme No 1. It officially opened at the Cannes festival in May 1998 and in Danish Theatres later that summer. But The Celebration was not Thomas Vinterbergs first film. Despite the fact that he was born in 1969 and thus only 29 years old when he won the special prize of the Jury at Cannes he graduated from the Danish Film school five years earlier - in 1993, 24 years old. AS far as I know the youngest person ever to have been accepted at the film school.

First, I'll go through the films of Vinterberg made prior to The Celebration. Second, I'll present you with an analysis of The Celebration, the point of the analysis being that the idea of dogma and thus the apparently unpolished cinematic style of The Celebration is based on a highly conventional way of structuring or shaping the narrative. I wish to show you that anti-Hollywood Dogma ideas may - in this case at least - join forces with ideas very well known to Hollywood and to other story telling machines. This parallels the fact that the controversial dogma ideas may easily join forces with commercial interest in making quite a lot of money. Not all the Danish Dogma film did make much money, but some, such as The Celebration did. One reason for that was the interest boosted by the fact that it had been branded as a dogma-film.

Being so young when he wrote and directed The Celebration Vinterberg did not have a huge production of films before. For a few years he was considered one of the most promising directors of a new generation of film makers. These expetations very based most of all on his exam film from the Danish Film school and on another short fiction film make one year later.

Sidste omgang (Last Round (1993, exam film from Film school)
Slaget på tasken (?, made for tv, 1993)
Drengen der gik baglæns (The boy who walked backwards, short film, 1994)
De største helte (The biggest Heroes, 1996)
Festen (The Celebration aka Dogma #1, 1998)
D-Dag (D-Day, made for tv, 2000, reedited 2002)
It's all about Love (2002?)

When you look through the films of Vinterberg, certain themes and tendencies reoccur. A central theme is based on the opposition between what is on the outside for everybody to see and what is on the inside. And the dynamics of this opposition between the Exposed and the Hidden is that hiding, in the case of Vinterberg: hiding your sorrows, hiding your feelings, is undesirable - and that - no matter the costs - you have to put things out in the open. Another central theme is that of the family, "Families and how to survive them" to phrase it with the title of a book written by comedian John Cleese and his psychotherapost.
A central tendency is the humoristic touch of Vinterberg. In most of his work humour is a central element even within the most tragic stories - and all of his central works (Last Round, The Boy …, The biggest Heroes, and The Celebration) are tragic, some even tragedies, deal with death. The death of a sibling, the death of the central character.
It is also characteristic of Vinterberg that he always focuses on the script and on the acting and the actors often using the same actors. Thus is was actually surprising as well as not surprising at all to see the elaborate and experimental visual style of The Celebration. Surprising because Vinterberg had not until The Celebration shown any tendencies towards experiments - he was just telling good human stories critising among other things peoples tendencies to keep up straight faces and tendencies towards small-mindedness. Unsurprising because the way in which The Celebration was shot allowed Vinterberg to work even more with the actors than he had even done before.
I want to show you the entire exam film, Sidste omgang, Last Round from 1993. It's seminal to the understanding of the Vinterberg Universe - and it's subtitled. It runs for 33 minutes - so I any of you need to go powder your noses before the screening, now is a good time.

What then is this film about? Basically of course it is about a young man who is dying from leuchemia and who steals some money in order just to get away from it all before he dies. However, he realizes that he has to take one last round with his friends. Doing so he comes to terms with the fact that he is dying and thus is able to return to the airport in order to fly away as he intended to earlier on. The second time, however, he doesn't try to run away, he leaves knowing that all is said and done. A rather mature piece of work from the hands of a 24 year old.

Fresh out of Film School Vinterberg directed and co-wrote a short made for tv-movie called Slaget på tasken. It's a social comedy dealing with social clients and a has been accountant who - probably - succeed in winning a legal battle against a speculator who tries to expell one of the central characters from her apartment. The made for tv-movie is minor work in the ouevre of Vinterberg, but it does show him from his humouristic side and also tells us, that he knows his popular Danish film, such as the famous Olsen Banden. The theme of the small, ordinary people against the cold, bureaucratic speculator is like lifted from an Olsen Bande film, and the same thing goes for the timing of the comedy. The film introduces actor Ulrich Thomsen who was later to star as the son Christian in The Celebration.
As was the case with Last Round Vinterbergs next short fiction film, Drengen, der gik baglæns is about coming to terms with death. This time, the central character is a nine year old boy, Andreas, whose older brother, Mikkel, dies in a traffic accident. He was sitting behind their father on the motorcycle on which the father had travelled the world. He dies, and though the family tries to move away from the tragedy, the tragedy moves along with them and Andreas develops an increasing obsessional neuroses. He actually blames himself for his brothers death: he stepped on the lines between the flags of the pavement, that means bad luck, and in his case death. He now gets inspired from a supermanlike tv-series to turn the earth and thus time bakwards. He starts walking backwards, visits the former family home and has an - imaginary - conversation with his deceased brother. He gets to say his goodbyes and adknowledges the fact that the life moves forwards - not backwards.

In 1996 Vinterberg's first full length feature film, The Biggest Heroes, opened. It stars the Thomas Bo Larsen who also played the central character in Last Round and Ulrich Thomsen who was part of the quartet in Slaget på tasken. It's the story of two lifelong friends, the Carsten, the jail bird, and Peter, the early retired psychiatric patien. While Carsten is out on parole a woman contacts him to inform him, that she is the mother of their mutual child, the 12 year old girl, Louise. In order to save Louise from a violent stepfather Carsten and Peter break parole, and take of for Northern Sweden in order to show her a swedish moose, among other things. From here on the film takes the form of a roadmovie depicting the trio of Carsten, Peter and Louise on their way away from Denmark through Sweden.

Having thus gone through the production of Thomas Vinterberg prior to his national and international breakthrough I shall now turn to The Celebration.

Not long ago I had the opportunity of addressing an audience of French students on the subject of Danish cinema. Knowing that the Dogma 95 films were well known to French audiences, I screened "The Celebration" by Thomas Vinterberg. After the screening I asked the students whether the characteristic cinematography and editing of the film had blocked their understanding of its subject matter. "No," the answer resounded, "we're used to watching MTV."

I was surprised by the answer, and I still believe that "The Celebration" is not an MTV movie, if such a thing exists. Although contradicted by the mere popularity of the film it might - from the point of view of the aesthetics of classical Hollywood - be said that "The Celebration" resists audience comprehension violating as it does one classical rule after the other, thus resembling the MTV style. Its stylistic format is, however, not that of the glossy MTV videos, but rather that of docu soaps, other formats of reality television, old-time documentary film and cinéma vérité. In relation to the subject matter of the film, the family celebration, the docu soap format authenticates the film although the professional cinematography (by Anthony Dod Mantle) and editing (by Valdis OskarsdottÌr) is more elaborate than television production economy typically allows. Considering the fact that "The Celebration" is, however, not (only) made for tv, but for theatrical release, the notion of art cinema becomes relevant.

What interests me in this short article is the relation between the art cinema/docu soap style on the one hand and the classical dramaturgy on the other. The dramaturgical angle is also relevant considering the fact that the dogma manifesto openly critizises dramaturgy, stating that "Predictability (dramaturgy) has become the golden calf around which we dance", indicating that we should stop doing so. One might thus expect "The Celebration" not to follow the predictable rules of dramaturgy. Director Thomas Vinterberg, hovewer, explained in an interview that he gave up that idea at a very early stage (Jensen 1998: 15).

It is easy to see that "The Celebration" takes place in a secluded space, the small castle, within around 24 hours and that it deals with one central story. Having only this information one might - correctly - assume that the film observes the rules of classical Aristotelian drama (the unity of time, place, and action). The temporal framing of the action is defined by the arrival of the guests, the preparation for the celebration, the celebration itself, and the epilogue of that celebration. Spatially the drama is set at the small castle and the unifying action of the story is the revelation of a family secret, i.e., the fact that the father whose 60th birthday is the reason for the celebration, sexually abused two of his children when they were small.

By analyzing in further detail the dramaturgical structure of the film, I now wish to underline the thesis that the film dramaturgically speaking is highly conventional.

The bottom line of dramaturgy is that stories consist - or for some dramaturgists should consist - of a number of phases. The number of phases vary as a result of the degree of detail wanted by the individual dramaturgist, but regardless of their actual number the phases are always in a fixed order. Danish writer Trine Breum presents the paradigm of dramaturgy in six phases in the following order:

The prelude introduces the theme and the conflict of the story. The prelude of "The Celebration"is limited to the first five scenes. In the first scene we see Christian, the son, come marching down a hilly country road. His cell-phone beeps and from fragments of the conversation we gather that something chocking will take place during the evening, but that Christian believes he can handle it. He then meets his brother Michael and during the next three scenes their sister, Helene, is also introduced.

The presentation explains the who, what, where and when of the film. In "The Celebration" it consists of the presentation of family and friends (and of the relations between these), and it takes place in connection with the arrival at the castle at which the action will takes place. Important parts of this phase are 1) the presentation of the father, Helge, and the mother, Else, and of their relations to their son, Christian, and 2) the subsequent increasingly intense, crosscut 12 minute sequence depicting the two brothers and the sister in their respective rooms. This sequence culminates in four very short scenes related to Helene’s discovery of the late sister's suicide letter. The contents of the letter are withheld from the audience until later, but from Helene’s exorcizing repetition "They must not find it, they must not find it," we understand the importance of it. The very strong marking of the discovery of the letter simultaneously marks what Breum calls the first turning point, i.e., "the change interfering with and changing the so far harmonious situation (Breum: 62) which also marks the "transition from the presentation to the clarification" (ibid.)

In the beginning of the clarification phase the celebration takes off with before dinner drinks and entree. After the entree the eldest son, Christian, is to deliver the first speech, which marks the point of no return. From here there is no way out. The family secret has been revealed and as the staff led by Christian’s childhood friend, the chef Kim, intervenes and steals the guests’ car keys, even the guests - literally speaking - have no way out.

The escalation of the conflict depicts the attempts of the characters to outmanoeuvre each other. Helene, the sister, calls Christian "in sane", Helge, the father, uses all his patriarchal authority in trying to put Christian back in place, Else, the mother, tries to pass the whole thing off by referring to Christian’s vivid imagination, and Michael, the brother, reacts violently. The brothers enter into a number of clashes, which, however, lead to no clarification. Michael is so afraid of his father that he does exactly what he is told, so when the father asks him to keep a watchful eye on everything, he interprets this literally and twice throws Christian out. Assisted by two male guests he even ties Christian to a tree in a nearby wood. At first only the staff and Helene’s boy friend, Gbartokai, side with Christian. This phase ends with the second turning point in which Helene cannot repress her knowledge of the suicide letter any longer and thus reads it aloud. The father admits his incestuous crime stating that the children did not deserve better.

Everybody is now convinced that Christian has been telling the truth all along, but still Michael's reaction has not been depicted. He, who so far has explicitly denied the idea of incest, becomes the active part in the climax phase. Totally disconcerted he beats up his father and is about to urinate over him when Christian intervenes and overhears the completely defeated father saying: "Kill me!"

In the fade, the last approximately five minutes of the film, we are at breakfast. Michael becomes the character who expels the father, who even loses the support of his wife. She chooses to remain at the breakfast table while he leaves the room totally defeated.

Analyzing the temporal and causal relations within the film one also finds a classical, dramaturgical structure. At almost any given point we know exactly where the action takes place and we understand the causal relations between the elements. There are for instance many examples of common set up/pay off mechanisms, i.e., of elements or character traits which are presented (set up) in order to be used later (pay off). An example has to do with Helene hiding the suicide letter in a painkiller tube. This action is a set up for the pay off later when Pia finds that same letter after having been asked - by Helene - to go get her painkillers.

One could go further into the dramaturgical aspects of the film, but the point should be clear by now: in terms of dramaturgy "The Celebration" is indeed very classic.

There are, however, certain 'flaws' in this classic structure. Some of them break with classic rules of coherence, others join forces in providing the film with a metaphysical, mystical dimension.

1. Set up without pay off: who is Christian talking to on the cell phone in the opening shot? It is definitely a co-conspirator but the film never reveals his or her identity. The mystery is left unsolved, and the telephone conversation does not point forward toward a pay off but only serves to inform us that Christian's revelation is well planned.

2. Mystical dimension. Several events in the film and the way in which they are related are inexplicable within daily life cause-and-effect logic. One clear example is what happens in the wake of the Helene’s shouting "boo" at the receptionist after discovering the crucial suicide letter in her room. Described earlier as marking the first turning point the "boo" initiates a sequence of cross cutting between the events in the rooms of Helene, Christian, and Michael respectively. This lies beyond everyday explanations of cause and effect: the fact that one person shouts "boo" in one room can only be the reason for the sudden events taking place in other rooms if the shout can be heard in the other rooms. That is in no wau indicated in "The Celebration" and what is suggested by the editing when Michael falls in the shower, when Christian loses his glass, when Pia suddenly breaks out of the water in the bathtub is that the discovery of the letter is important to everybody - beyond causality.

3. 'Goofs'. There are also a few ’goofs’ in "The Celebration". In one scene for instance Michael adds five years to his father’s age talking as he does about his 65th birthday, and the German toastmaster gets away with calling Helge his "dänisches Vater" and Else his "dänisches Mutter" instead of refering correctly to them as his "dänischer Vater" and"dänische Mutter".

4. Metafilmic dimension: One might in this connection draw the attention to one of several metafilmic details from the film. Standing on the stairs of the castle to welcome the guests Michael also greets his wife who, however, is mad at him for having thrown her and the children out of the car. That is why she pushes his arm away when he tries to hug her. This violent movement makes Michael’s arm - or rather that of actor Thomas Bo Larsen - hit the camera. He subsequently shrinks from the blow, winces but after a short reaction falls back into character.

The first two of these elements - the set up with no pay off and the mystical dimension are of course consciously chosen. On the one hand the question "Who is Christian’s co-conspirator?" is left unanswered and one might argue that one does not need to know the answer. The mystical dimension on the other hand adds to the theme of the film thus leaving some elements inexplicable.

Regarding the goofs they might be seen as a result of the vow of chastity, speaking as it does of refraining from creating an oeuvre, giving the moment priority over the whole. If an oeuvre is a rounded whole the goofs point to the fact that parts of "The Celebration" do not form part of such a rounded whole and also that the moment, not the whole, has priority. Similarly, it does not matter whether the son forgets how old his father is or that the German toastmaster does not speak his mother tongue properly: The moment in which the mistakes happen have priority over the whole. The same goes for actor Thomas Bo Larsen's hitting the camera.

Though very classic at the level of the dramaturgical paradigm these small examples show that "The Celebration" in flawlessly Hollywood. This becomes even more clear when considering the film's style. It is easy to note that lightning, camera movements, and editing of the film differ from classical Hollywood. The aesthetics of "The Celebration" provides the film with a strong documentary coding, no matter how fictitious the story and how Aristotelian the dramaturgy.

A few brief examples of the cinematography and the editing in the opening sequence must carry the burden of proof. First of all it should, however, be noted that generally speaking the film is told in a chronological, progressive way. There are no uncommon or unaccounted for jumps between different spatial, temporal and psychological dimensions. The dimensions of time, space, and reality are only unclear in the sequence depicting Christian’s collapse. As a rule the joining of scenes of the film is characterised by an alternation between a progressive line of action taking place in one location on the one hand and sequences cross cutting - in parallel montage - between events taking place at different locations on the other.

The Dogma Rules determine parts of the style of "The Celebration". This is obvious in the case of lightning - or rather the absence of lightning. The dogma rule prohibiting artificial lightning - in relation with the technical rerecording from the original video tapes to the 35 mm release prints - results in very grainy images, especially in very dark parts and parts with great contrast between light and darkness. Another stylistic element directly derived from the rules is the absence of underscore music. There is diegetic music - a couple of songs, a little piano music - but no ‘film music proper’. The hand held camera also mentioned in the rules accounts for images in some, but definitely not all, scenes being very shaken (which they - according to the rules - do not have to be).

Other stylistic characteristics of "The Celebration" cannot be deducted directly from the rules but are specific interpretations of them. This is the case with the alternations between close ups and long shots on the one hand and level and canted frames on the other, and also in the many ’violations’ of the 180 degree rule. Let me demonstrate these specific interpretations by analyzing in some detail the opening shots of the film.

The very first shot (1) is a normal establishing shot. A long shot of a man entering the diegesis as he walks towards the camera down a country road. The cut from the first to the second shot of the film (2), however, announces the style we are to expect during the whole of the film. The cut from the long shot front view of Christian (1) to a medium wide angle shot of him seen from behind (2) is not by the book. Christian even almost drops out of the frame. It might also be noted that in (2) the sky is very blue where as in the following shot (3), showing a backlit front view of Christian, it is almost white. This suggests a breaking of a rule of continuity stating that the colors of the same objects must not change from one shot to the next.


Shot 1: Long shot of Christian, front view #9;	Shot 2: Medium, wide, low angle shot of #9; #9; Christian, rear view


Shot 3: Front shot of Christian, low angl, backlit #9; #9; rear view	Shot 4a: Long shot, through windshield

In the 4th shot we see – with no outside shot establishing its point in time and space – from inside a car in motion (4a). From a long shot through the windshield there is a pan to the driver of the car (Michael) and from him to his wife and children on the backseat. A close frame-by-frame-look at the transition between the shots 4 and 5 reveals a jump cut showing Michael looking to the left at the end of shot 4 (4b) and to the right at the beginning of shot 5 - with - among other things - the horizon 'jumping up and down' [move the cursor over shot 4b to get an impression of the cut between 4b and 5]

Looking closer at the meeting of the two brothers in the subsequent ’I fuck you’-sequence it turns out to be quintessential to the visual style of "The Celebration", as crossings of the axis of action is more common than not in this sequence. The camera moves constantly around the characters, the horizontal line is rarely stable and in one case the horizon is even vertical! The characters, Michael and Christian, are sometimes in the frame, at other times outside it, and sometimes the shots are so close to the characters that it is difficult to determine what we see.

Having drawn attention to these stylistic features I believe I have made point. Regardless of its otherwise classical dramaturgy, a few 'flaws' and especially the radically different cinematography and editing make "The Celebration" a highly unconventional theatrical feature film. This only goes to show that film makers constantly are able to renew film language and that there is no contradiction between a dramaturgically classic story and an innovative style. In "The Celebration" an elaborate version of televisual docu soap aesthetics functions to authenticate the classic story of the family drama.

Breum, Trine. Film: fortælling & forførelse. En grundbog om filmdramaturgi og manuskriptskrivning. København: Frydenlund, 1993.

Jensen, Bo Green. "Det store kvantespring. Et portræt af Thomas Vinterberg". In: Vinterberg, Thomas. Festen. København: Per Kofod, 1998.


The vertical horizon	Crossing the axis of action, 1

Crossing the axis of action, 2	Crossing the axis of action, 3


Mikkel, The deceased brother, talking' to his smaller brother		Andreas, the boy who walkes backwards, listening to his deceased brother.


Peter, the psychiatric patient (Ulrich Thomsen)		The Biggest Heroes in their magical momant.