Just when I start thinking that the auteur theory is a load of crap and that movies reveal so much more than the sum of their director's psychoses, I see another Lars von Trier film. And I am caught and held in a snow-globe world where, over and over, humiliation falls down on female characters and, over and over, they float up as beloved martyrs. Within that globe, von Trier's women seem to choose their humiliations as protests against some social order--although their martyrdom always rises out of sacrifice for a male character. Outside the globe, von Trier amuses himself by turning his toy this way, then that, meting out, in turn, degradation, bliss,... More >>>