Sightlines · reception
How The Idiots was received
1998 · Lars von Trier · The Idiots on Sightlines
The arc
Booed and walked out on at Cannes '98, it was the scandal of the festival — now it's reclaimed by von Trier devotees as the rawest, most honest of the Dogme 95 films, though 'reappraised' has never meant 'comfortable'.
What’s debated
The eternal fight: is it a genuinely radical interrogation of bourgeois conformity, or an offensive stunt hiding behind provocation — and can you even separate the two with von Trier?
Its footprint
It's Dogme #2 and the movement's most notorious artifact — the film people mean when they say Dogme 95 'went too far', with a censorship saga (black boxes over the explicit scene in several countries) that became part of its legend.
Where it stands
The dare of the Golden Heart trilogy — the one cinephiles who loved Breaking the Waves circle warily, a 'have you actually seen it?' badge among von Trier completists.
Did you know? Critic Mark Kermode was ejected from the Cannes press screening for loudly heckling the film — a story he's retold for decades; von Trier, meanwhile, claimed to have written the script in just four days.