MovieChat Forums > Ett hål i mitt hjärta (2004) Discussion > Censorship - did the director do this, a...

Censorship - did the director do this, and why?

posted 19 years ago by turkeycat
10 replies | jump to latest

I just saw this movie today in the UK - pretty hard-hitting stuff...

Could someone please suggest to me why so many of the visuals were 'censored out' with a fuzzy area?

I'm not particularly meaning sex scenes and the like, but certain people's faces, brand names, words, signs, etc?

I imagine that the director did this and that it wasn't the British Board of Film Classification or whatever. But is he saying that the home-porn industry makes people all anonymous/blank faces, or was it a legal necessity with the film's distributor or something...?

I would be interested to confirm if this censoring appears in the movie in other territories outside the UK.

Thanks.

turkeycat

[–] islipaway 19 years ago

I saw in in the UK as well.

I thought the blanked out faces/products was to do with getting the right to publish with those people's faces on, like on hidden camera shows where the public are often blanked out as they did not consent to having their face shown on TV. In the case of the products I thought it was in order to to promote any product, or again perhaps the products did not wish to be associated with the film.

[–] ilonavangolen 19 years ago

Today I saw the movie at a filmfestival and Lukas Moodysson was present to anwer questions from the audience.
Someone asked him this exact same question and it turns out that he did it only 'for artistic reasons' and that it had nothing to do with legal issues. So there. :)

[–] turkeycat 19 years ago

Thanks for that - I had a feeling that there was more going on that just legal stuff, especially because at times the censorings did not seem really to cover things that I thought would have been legally necessary (ie, the faces of the three main actors are at one point blotted out). As I mentioned in my original posting, I thought it might be to suggest the anonymity and soul-stealing nature of the home-porn industry, but I guess that is open to discussion.

[–] islipaway 19 years ago

Ah yeah, I forgot about the bit with the main characters being blotted out, that I took as a sort of parody of the fact he had to blot out the faces of other people, but it seems this was not the case!

[–] 19845 19 years ago

It totally ruined the movie..over and out

[–] TracesOfLove 18 years ago

Here's my theory on the product placement being blurred out...

I watch the Sundance Channel, which is supposed to be this independent non-commercial channel. And yet there are commercials on it all the time! Now if you watch a film like La Pianiste or Demonlover scenes deemed pornographic are blurred out and in the case of a film called Intimacy completely cut out of the film altogether! So I find it ironic that in this film which has many shocking scenes chose to blurr out the only thing the Sundance Channel would allow on their network! I have heard that the director wanted to make this film using American icons (Christina Aguilara and Sylvestor Stallone) so I'm assuming that this was a message aimed mostly towards American similarly to Von Trier's Dogville. Now I'm still working on the blurred faces. I've got a few theories I have yet to choose from. I'll re-edit later if I do.

Cousin Cheryl, I don't think the family REALLY knows you.

[–] superoskar100 18 years ago

In fact, the only reason I'm on these boards right now, is because I got so dratting pissed off about all the 'blurred out' objects. In Sweden, the censorship in movies is really relaxed. That's the main reason to why I found it so annoying(I live in Sweden). It totally ruined the whole experience.

I never liked Moodyson anyways...

[–] UlrikSander 18 years ago

It's was pretty obvious that they were blurred out for artistic reasons. I specifically refer to the human faces (in the super-market ie.). To me, it was a way to point out that these people are stuck together. They only have each-other, and all other people 'in the real world' are just anonymous faces they can't relate to. Others might look at it in a different way...

But legal reasons?? Come on... If that was the case, you would definately see a lot more blurred out faces in movies nowadays...

[–] rob_c_69 17 years ago

The way i see it... the intention of censoring the faces of the people in the supermarket was to dehumanize them. Just as the characters in the movie dehumanize themselves in order to become famous (by recording a home-made porn movie), they dehumanize everyone around them, because they serve no benefit to them. And censoring brands and other items, i think it's because it's unimportant to the characters, it's just something that doesn't matter to them... that's why so many things were censored, because all they cared was to become famous.

[–] TheMachinistSleeps 9 years ago

He also censored a quick spreadshot from Tess, after the "pretend rape" attempt. Obviously he wanted to keep it classy. :)