We’ve come to the conclusion that Lars von Trier has always been a little bit off compared to the average person, even in his formative years. The short film von Trier made when he was 11 remains the safest entry in his entire filmography and it ends with a Danish word that definitely has a different meaning and connotation in English, an unintentional language and culture gap that perversely predicts the Danish director’s affinity for assaulting his audience’s good taste. With “The Nymphomaniac” hitting Blu-ray next week, let’s head back to the internet’s time machine and look at what else the Danish enfant terrible was up to when he was just a youth.
The eagle eyes over at Dangerous Minds have found another early von Trier short, this time made when the director was 14, a year before this short. Continuing his one-film tradition of long-winded titles, this roughly eight-minute long short is titled “Why Try to Escape from Which You Know You Can’t Escape from? Because You Are a Coward!.”
Once again, the short film is staggeringly technically competent for someone his age—and especially for the time period it was made in—but unlike his stop-motion animated first short, this time out he’s closer in tone to the von Trier we know and love. It’s best if you see the results for yourself but know this, it involves a kid being hit by a truck and a very unsettling chase scene. Watch the short below and pick up both volumes of “The Nymphomaniac” when hits Blu-Ray and DVD on July 8th.
