#1108: VINTERBERG, Thomas: The Celebration (1998)

VINTERBERG, Thomas (Denmark)
The Celebration [1998]
Spine #1108
Blu-ray


The Danish Dogme 95 movement that struck world cinema like a thunderbolt began with The Celebration, the international breakthrough by Thomas Vinterberg, a lacerating chamber drama that uses the economic and aesthetic freedoms of digital video to achieve annihilating emotional intensity. On a wealthy man’s sixtieth birthday, a sprawling group of family and friends convenes at his country estate for a celebration that soon spirals into bedlam, as bombshell revelations threaten to tear away the veneer of bourgeois respectability and expose the traumas roiling beneath. The dynamic handheld camera work, grainy natural lighting, cacophonous diegetic sound, and raw performance style that would become Dogme hallmarks enhance the shattering visceral impact of this caustic indictment of patriarchal failings, which swings between blackest comedy and bleakest tragedy as it turns the sick soul of a family inside out.

105 minutes
Color
Monaural
in Danish
1:33:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2022

Director/Writers

Screenplay by Mogens Rukov and Thomas Vinterberg.
Vinterberg was 29 when he directed The Celebration.

The Film

A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Twenty-page booklet featuring an essay by critic and author Michael Koresky.

Commentary

From 2005 featuring Vinterberg.

Interview

With Vinterberg.

Two early short films

By Vinterberg: Last Round (1993) and The Boy Who Walked Backwards (1995).

The Purified

A 2002 documentary about Dogma 95, featuring interviews with Vinterberg and filmmakers Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, Kristian Levring, and Lars von Trier.

Program

In which Vinterberg discusses the real-life inspiration for the film.

Documentaries

Featuring members of the cast and crew at the film’s premiere in Copenhagen and reflecting on the production.

ADM:DOP

A 2003 documentary profile of DP Anthony Dod Mantle.

Deleted scenes

With optional audio commentary by Vinterlberg.

Trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Criterion Collection By Spine #

#331: OZU, Yasujiro: Late Spring (1949)

#304: ROEG, Nicolas: The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976)