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Lars von Trier Breaking the Waves, counterform

example · film: Breaking the Waves · retold in 3 talks
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Von Trier shot an ultra-pathetic story in pseudo-documentary style (handheld, clumsy cuts) because direct formal matching would collapse into ridicule. The form opposes the content precisely so the content can land, form is more than content.

2012: 1 talk 2017: 1 talk 2018: 1 talk
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026

As told 3

“if I were to shoot a movie directly in a way that would fit it form, it would collapse, it would appear ridiculous. So the only way to sell that story it's to oppose form to it, to do the counterform.”
1:25:23 Transcendental Subjectivity Part 12017-10-04 · 1:47:34
“this coldness of the form which distinguiates it... the obstacle is the positive is the positive condition here.”
1:11:35 Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 6pub. 2018-11-28 · 1:39:14
“this quasi-documentary style functions like some kind of a screen which softens and makes palpable so that you can take seriously the story.”
6:42 On the Desert of Post-Ideology2012-10-02 · 1:59:31

What it carries

one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)

contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
Möbius strip ×1 the obstacle ×1 the coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum) ×1

Its cast and sources

populated by
Louis Dumont1Alfred Rosenberg1Orlando Figes1William Harrison Hays1Ilse Lühnde1Viktor László1Ian Fleming1Owen Flanagan1
alongside works
Breaking the Waves3Naming and Necessity2Wittgenstein on Rules1The Gray Eminence1Homo Hierarchicus1Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad)1The Spy Who Came in from the Cold1On the Gradual Formation of Thought in the Process of Speaking1

Every retelling 3

1:25:23 Transcendental Subjectivity Part 12017-10-04 · 1:47:34
Von Trier shot an ultra-pathetic story in pseudo-documentary style (handheld, clumsy cuts) because direct formal matching would collapse into ridicule. The form opposes the content precisely so the content can land, form is more than content., illustrating form and content reversal,Möbius strip
1:11:35 Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 6pub. 2018-11-28 · 1:39:14
Von Trier used a cold, Dogme 95 style (handheld, blurred) to make a romantic, passionate story palatable; the 'obstacle' of the form is the positive condition for the content., illustrating obstacle as positive condition,unity of opposites
6:42 On the Desert of Post-Ideology2012-10-02 · 1:59:31
Von Trier used quasi-documentary handheld camera style, out of sync with the melodramatic narrative, as a distancing filter to make the ridiculous romantic story palpable; the opposite of standard melodrama., illustrating ideological distance,style vs content,Gangnam Style analogy