Movies You Might Have Missed: Thomas Vinterberg's Festen

In 1995, Danish directors Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von Trier concocted Dogme 95, a filmmaking movement intended to purify the art form by excluding technology and special effects and instead focus on traditional storytelling values. The first film created under these rules, Vinterberg’s Festen (1998) is perhaps the bleakest farce ever made, an all-out assault on the senses that leaves one unsure whether to laugh or cry.

Festen, released under the title The Celebration in the United States, concerns a family gathering in honour of the patriarch’s 60th birthday. Over the course of the evening, we are confronted with abuse revelations, racist songs, horrific beatings and suicide notes. This makes the most intense Mike Leigh family get-together look like an evening with the Brady Bunch.

Vinterberg shot the film on video and blew it up to 35mm. Adhering strictly to the Dogme rules, no artificial sounds were added in post-production and the camera was hand-held at all times. This naturalistic approach to dark material would become more commonplace with television programmes like The Office and Peep Show but, in 1998, it was totally unprecedented. Indeed, the latter sitcom even referenced Festen in one of its darker episodes. The subject matter is as transgressive as the method of filmmaking and the audience feels as though they are genuinely eavesdropping on the dinner from hell.

The director has resisted the label “black comedy” and maintained, “it’s a drama and there are some laughs”. The juxtaposition between the monstrous situation and the guests attempting to enjoy themselves, however, makes for devastating satire. The guests, like the family members, are concerned solely with appearances but beneath that thin veneer of respectability lies an unfathomable darkness. Psychologists have also praised the work and noted that the surreal manner in which the birthday festivities continue is reminiscent of the chronic denial often seen in incestuous families.

Watching Festen is not easy and some will find the experience unremittingly bleak. This is a volatile movie and the manner in which the material is presented leaves one feeling as though we should not be privy to these revelations. For those that can stomach it, however, this is an audacious and staggering attack on the hypocrisy of the chattering classes and one of the most idiosyncratic tragicomedies in the annals of cinema.