All Lars Von Trier Films Ranked

One of the biggest provocateurs in contemporary cinema, Lars Von Trier manages to never leave anybody indifferent to his films. Venerated or despised, the Danish filmmaker is polarizing and divisive as few other directors, so while we wait for the release of The House That Jack Built, we decided to rank the rest of his films, from decent (he might be one of the few filmmakers that has ever done a truly bad movie) to the superb masterpiece(s).

12. Epidemic (1987)

A metanarrative essay that is halfway between pure avant-garde experimentation and a narrative film. It is challenging and rewarding in showing us the process of Von Trier to trace his own style by approaching the very classics of genre cinema in German Expressionism. But it's slow and has a lot of mistakes of a starting filmmaker with no budget and no much planning, but its faults are entirely compensated by its ambition.

11. Direktøren for det Hele (2006) (The Boss of it All)

The film that no one expected Von Trier to ever do: an office comedy, and the one that he made only to prove that he could do a better job at the genre than 95% of the comedy directors. Yes, it is hilarious and clever, and pretty much the most accessible Von Trier film, but it is also the one where he experimented the less, just taking his Dogma style to the realms of comedy. Enjoyable but almost forgettable.

10. Forbrydelsens Element (1984)

(The Element of Crime)

From his first feature, it was clear that one of Von Trier's goals as a filmmaker was to subvert film genres, and for his version of a film noir, he exchanged the sober black and white for an intense and sensuous amber. A mix of traditional noir, German expressionism and Tarkovsky, it's an hypnotic and beautifully shot descent to the dirtiest side of the human psyque, but also overly complicated, dense and sordid.

9. Manderlay (2005)

A sequel to Dogville, identical in style, Manderlay is quite an interesting, complex and controversial analysis of racial relationships and how they have shaped the history of the United States. In terms of plot and character there are few things to criticize, but compared to Dogville, it feels like an entirely minor film, and a bit unnecessary once that Von Trier decided to don't film the last film in the trilogy.

8. Idioterne (1998)

(The Idiots)

Dogma 95, founded by Von Trier and other Danish filmmakers, might probably be the last one of the relevant avant-garde movements of cinema in the 20th Century. Stripping film to its most basics elements, Von Trier makes an exploration of human behavior and social conventions that gives us a lot to think in moral terms, but it is very far from Thomas Vinterberg's Festen, which is the really most important film of Dogma movement.

7. Antichrist (2009)

The most exquisite cinematography in any of his movies, but at the same time the most repulsive one of them all with its explicit violence and sex. Von Trier's version of a horror movie takes us to the darkest side of human mind, with powerful storytelling and top level performances by Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe. It could have been of the biggest masterpieces of horror cinema if it wasn't because of the disappointing and highly sexist ending.

6. Nymphomaniac (2013)

Five hours full of explicit sex in a tale of a woman who is addicted to it. Probably second place in the Von Trier's shocking factor next after Antichrist, we get to see the ambivalence in his relationship towards women in what might be his most feminist film, one that explores in deep female desire, independence and rebellion to social roles. Quite a few very memorable scenes and frames, it manages to keep a strong cohesion throughout all its individual vignettes.

5. Zentropa (1991)

(Europa)

This one might be the first one of Von Trier's masterpieces. A thriller in post-World War II Germany, full of symbols about the European history and decadence, and a ruthless analysis of the philosophical question about the inherent goodness or badness in human beings. A glorious mise-en-scéne, full of artistry in every frame, shaping the projection that would use the most creative visual devices to show his nihilistic vision of the world and the human condition.

4. Melancholia (2011)

Most of the time, Von Trier wants to provoke and in his way he makes important analysis about life, but in Melancholia, he departed from a very serious point only to end up in the most crushing realization of the lack of sense in our existence. It is a movie about despair, about a personal apocalypse that matches the end of the Earth itself. Almost pictorial in its visual style, with a portentous opening sequence, it is mesmerizing how much beauty can fit in that pessimism.

3. Breaking the Waves (1996)

Like all existential thinkers and artists, Von Trier has religion as one of the recurrent topics in his work, but in no other of his films he captures so well the abysmal distances between a personal faith and the institutionalized fanaticism. Probably one of the best cinematic melodramas ever crafted, and heightened largely by Emily Watson's great performance, Breaking the Waves questions faith, morality and suffering like very few other filmmakers have ever done.

2. Dancer in the Dark (2000)

The Anti-Musical. Not only this film plays in his own league at breaking every single genre convention of what a musical film should be, it is also one of the most depressing films that you could find. A tragedy (in the Greek sense of the word) so round in its crafting and so well performed by Björk in the lead (probably the best non-trained actor performance ever) that is classical cinema and avant-garde experimentation at the same time.

1. Dogville (2003)

You will have a hard time trying to decide what is worthy of more praise, if the perfect screenplay that deals with philosophical topics like the concept of good and bad, establishes double morality as the foundation of American lifestyle, and has one plot twist right after the next one, each one better and more intriguing than the previous, or if it is the daring visual style that, as he promised in his Dogma manifesto (but not adhering to it) strips cinema to the most basic, rawest elements to tell a story, but still finding immensely creative ways to be entirely cinematic and be aesthetically unique (if we don't count its sequel, Manderlay). In any case, form and substance blend together to bring an absolute masterpiece to life. A film that is so hard as it is necessary to question ourselves and our self-regard as good and righteous persons, and to question how society pushes its individuals out of the moral boundaries that it creates for them.