Last Scene


Hi there, I'm working on this movie for my thesis, and I'd like to read what you took from the movie's last scene -ie Karen's return to her house. Thanks!

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It's a great scene. very powerful. its a typically von trier/vinterberg scene, because it accurs in many of their films, dogma or not, that a caracter does or says something that makes the people around him/her embarassed, scandalized or angry. In this scene we have the same feeling and emotion like in the scene of breaking the waves when the girl goes to the church and the people in the church look at her with hate because they know she's become a prostitute, or the whole scene of the court in dancer in the dark, or the scenes from festen when cristian accuses his dad. Its always a group of people hostile to one single, or a minority of people, and always for wrong reasons of course.

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Do you think there's a difference between Karen's spassing and the spassing of the rest of the idiots? Why is hers so much powerful?

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Sure there is a difference. The others seem to be just playing around or , but for Karen its almost a therapy, like she really needs to act like an idiot to find the kind of innocence, ingenuousness and happiness she has lost with the death of her son. Thats why, even if she seldom acts like an idiot, she is the only one of the idiots that has the courage and actually needs to share this way of living that helped her so much, with her family.
Obviously, the ending scene is very powerful mainly because we assist at her family's very hostile and intollerant reaction, which shows us how little they understand Karen.

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Yes, I agree. My idea is that Karen's lack of mediation with spassing acts as a critique to the whole spassing project, which attemps to overcome bourgeois alienation but in the end, and due to their mainly intellectual -distant- approach, the whole excersise lets alienation back in again. Either you feel it or it won't work. Thanks.

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so how did your thesis go?

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This is one of my focus films for Film Studies A-Level and I was just wondering who the guy was that hit Karen in this scene because I kind of missed something whilst writing notes.
Vicky xxx

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Wasn't he her husband, who hadn't seen her since their child was killed? When she showed up and started acting like an idiot, he didn't know how to deal with it and slapped her (justifiably).

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I don't know if I would call Karen's family's reaction to her "intolerable". How would you act if your son died and then your spouse disappears, only to return weeks later, drooling like an idiot?

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Karen's family is clearly shown as extremely unemotional and incapable of showing any feelings. I see the Idiot's "project" as an exercise on how one could better face the often so senseless world many people are living in. When Karen asks her friend to come to her home to see as she acts as an idiot, she actually wants her to see how her family acts. And when her fried says that she has seen enough, let's go, she dose not mean that she has seen enough Karen's behavior but the behavior of her family. Unfortunately, as a whole, von Trier does not manage to say anything interesting in this film and the film was quite a dissapointment.

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i never caught the end of the film - can someone give me a brief synopsis so that i can understand this post? It'll be MUCH APPRECIATED!!!

-Syd

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I didn't like the family's comments of 'obviously you didn't care'.
That's *beep* There are meny parents who simply cannot go to their childs funeral, because that would make it all to real.
And she needed to be alone, not plagued by that *beep* boring conventional family, she needed to be her own self.
She wasn't completly able to deal with the death, but by at least finally saying goodbye to her past life, she might be able to.
Though I'd rather not be either one...an Idiot? No thanks.


If I were a drink I'd be a margarita, since I'm tall, salty& I always have tequila in me-Chip Esten

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unfortunately you didn't understand the fact that karen is expressing her pain through her acting like an idiot. her family doesn't understand it either. her friend is trying to save her from her family.

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And one more thing...IMO, Karen's success in acting idiotic was also motivated by her indifferent surroundings, her families. Many people in the group were able to spass in a strange environment but failed when they're in front of acquaintances was because the people who know them intend to care for them and expect something from them, like the painter could do nothing but give a good lecture after his old-aged female students praised his teaching.

So the capacity of spassing rather depends on how much you're related to the environments and sort of became the evaluation of the society. Karen was able to spass also because her families couldn't care less, and thus became an irony on another layer.

In a word, it's not a matter of whether they understand or not. They just didn't give a damn at all.

What made the universe made me.

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Diplodocus55 wrote:

How would you act if your son died...

I think that´s the point right there. How would you act if your son died? I think that it is hard to know what would happen to oneself if a tragedy like that occured.

I think you are allowed to be chocked to the core and act irrationally. How would a slap in the face make anything better? Talk to her. Ask her how she feels. Help her to get back to normal. Isn´t that what any decent spouse would do?

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Katarina, looking back at the post you responded to, it does seem harsh. All I meant was that my if wife came home and put on an idiot show like that right after our kid was killed, I would take that as severely disrespectful and offensive (not saying I would go far as to slap my hypothetical wife--just that it would definitely get a rise out of me). The husband's reaction was believable. That's what makes the scene so powerful. Anyway, I don't have time to go into it deeper but there you go.

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i'd probably think 1. she's having a drug overdose. she couldn't handle the loss and has spent the weeks since her disappearance trading her dignity for mental oblivion and now i've lost her forever. 2. she's having a stroke or something like that. or 3. she's gone insane from sheer emotional stress.
"she's been self-medicating through abstract metatheatre " would probably be the last conclusion i'd come to. whatever my thoughts, it probably wouldn't occur to me to SLAP HER IN THE FACE!.

but then, i'm not a violent *beep* so who am i to judge? oh right, it's called A SANE HUMAN BEING!

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Anyone who is a prostitute and walk into church SHOULD be looked at with hate. It is so disrespectful and idiotic to think you have the right to walk in there when you don't even follow the religion.

The title of this movie sure fits though.

The fact that this is a dogme-movie just makes it more sick.

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Wow, you really don't belong here on this thread, Svanen.

The scene you are referring to is not in this film, but in another film by Lars von Trier; "Breaking the Waves".

Breaking the Waves is not a dogme-film.

And in the scene, Bess - the prostitute - is merely a prostitue because of her strong belief in the religion.

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Anyone who is a prostitute and walk into church SHOULD be looked at with hate.

How Christian of you!

Anyway, didn't Jesus hang around with prostitutes?


I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to leave the room with a little dignity.

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I think the last scene summed up the irony of the film: that these bohemians thought they were liberating themselves by acting like so-called 'idiots', but that this belief truly was idiotic. But for Karen, their odd, outrageous, and more to the point, emotionally explosive behavior shook her out of her grief.

When confronted with her repressed family and especially her cold, abusive husband, she could do what her new friends could not--act retarded in a conventional social setting where onlookers knew better. It wasn't anything intrinsic about acting the 'idiot' that proved liberating for Karen; it was the courage she had to summon up to do it that set her free--free to feel her grief and free to leave her unhealthy family openly instead of sneaking out as before. In her way, she was the most naive of them all, but in the end she proved to be the bravest of them all as well.

What fabulous ambiguity! Nearly never happens in American films, of course.

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I also agree that Karen was surelly the princess of the idioterne, the purest, more naive and the bravest. the end was very emotional, showing her motivation, and giving new depths to being idiot.

And, so, i would like to ask you, what did you think acting idiot ment for you? in other words, what kind of idiot you are? :)) I think i would love to act out in a public place like a supermarket, but in group...

I think as greater the will to escape, whatever your motivations the better idiot you will get, don't you think that happened to karen?

see u soon

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I absolutely cannot understand how people find Karen's ultimate spassing to be liberating. It's a futile rebellion with respect to her family, and if anything Karen is only trying to prove she is the best idiot of them all, which she is.

The rest of the spassers had already abandoned their project as a failure, or had become bored, or succumbed to material desire, what have you. Karen is absolutely and completely alone in her idiocy at the end of the film, as isolated and remote as she was when the spassers first met her. And I don't see any awareness on Karen's part.

At any rate, the scene is truly shocking, genuinely, which is no small accomplishment. For the flipside -- for the fun side of spassing -- check out the CKY videos, especially the parts with Raab Himself.

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I think you're putting too much emphasis on the "spassing". To me, that was just a metaphor for something else, although I'd be hard pressed to say what, exactly. Radical politics perhaps, among other things (the Weathermen used to practice group sex for political reasons). But the point of the scene, I would say, is that Karen had a real, painful issue to deal with, whereas the others were basically dilettantes. Which is why she was able to go through with it when they chickened out.

I think in a self-reflexive way, the film was also about the whole process of acting. You can imagine a radical left-wing improvisational theatre troupe in most of the scenes here without too much tweaking.


I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to leave the room with a little dignity.

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to me it was very simple.
I just felt "so much for returning to reality". It seems so ridiculous and abnormal to be spassing with all these misfits, but at least she could be natural, could be herself. When she returned to what she knew what did she get, a cold reception, angry stares and a slap in the face.

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I think Karen was a very special character because she was the one where you didn't know anything about her past or her person. He came from so to say nowhere and just at the end you got to know what happened to her.
Also one wouldn't expect HER to to home in her free will and in that way to play an idiot. She was rather the shy person who just joined the group because she felt alone or lost. And right in the most difficult of all situations she really starts playing an idiot what is extreme powerful.

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For me, Karen's special moment at the end showed up all the spassers for the charlatans that they are. Von Trier beautifully portrays the wide range of people who have joined this group and the subsequent wide range of reasons they choose to participate. Karen shines through as the having the most "pure" motivation behind joining the group and turns out to be the only one that has the bravery and strength to step over into 'real life' with this philosophy to a family who are cold and understandably angry at her for abandoning the horrific situation she chose to flee from.

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Karen is the key. She's the only 'normal' person in the movie (after we've found out her circumstances).

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