By A. O. SCOTT
rticle 8 of the Vow of Chastity promulgated in 1995 by the Danish film movement, Dogma, says, "Genre movies are not acceptable." One of the two Dogma films currently showing in this country, Soren Kragh-Jacobsen's "Mifune," could be accused of flouting this rule, since it uses the movement's austere principles -- hand-held cameras, available light, no dubbed sound, no props -- to produce what is essentially a romantic comedy.
Now Lars von Trier, one of Dogma's founders, has used these techniques to produce a two-hour, semi-pornographic Mentos commercial. In case you haven't seen them, these ads, produced in not-quite-English by a European agency, feature impish, appealing Nordic young people whose love of a certain chewy candy induces them to perform pointless actions that scandalize and amuse snooty old ladies, uptight yuppies and other guardians of social propriety. Each clip ends with the semi-nonsensical tag line "Mentos: the fresh maker," an epithet that might be applied to Mr. von Trier, who has, with missionary zeal, devoted his talents to ridding world cinema of stale aesthetic conventions.
Whether he has succeeded is a matter to be debated elsewhere. His earlier films "Zentropa" (which trafficked in the kind of arty illusionism he would later renounce) and "Breaking the Waves" have been widely and extravagantly praised, and each one depends on a provocative moral premise. "Zentropa" suggests that Germany's problem after World War II was that "nobody had been very nice to it for a long time," and "Breaking the Waves" portrays a woman's willing submission to utter sexual degradation as an act of transcendent spiritual import.
Even if one concludes that these ideas are meretricious and repellent, the films that advance them are intellectually and formally rigorous enough to make them seem worth thinking about. Unfortunately "The Idiots," shot in smeary, hand-held digital video, has nothing on its mind besides the squirming discomfort of its audience, the achievement of which it holds up as a brave political accomplishment.
Its heroes are a group of mischievous, good-looking young Nordics dedicated to a pastime the subtitles render as "spassing," which means going into public places and behaving like mentally disabled people. They do this in the time-honored bohemian tradition of shocking middle-class sensibilities and to affirm the naturalness and dignity of mental disability. "Being an idiot is a luxury and a way forward," explains Stoffer (Jens Albinus), their unofficial leader and chief theoretician. "Idiots are the people of the future."
In the service of this utopian vision, Stoffer and his comrades, who occupy a lovely suburban estate owned by Stoffer's bourgeois uncle, visit a factory, a public swimming pool and a biker bar, where they drool, twitch and hobble around in theatrical defiance of middle-class values. Then they come home for candlelight self-criticism sessions, angry debates on the finer points of idiotology and a writhing orgy.
In the course of these activities, they reveal bits and pieces of their lives. One has gone AWOL from his wife and child and from a job in an advertising agency, another may be suffering from a real mental disorder; another is a doctor. And hovering at the margins, skeptical of the ethics of spassing but grateful for the sustaining community the idiots offer, is Karen (Bodil Jorgensen), who carries around a sense of hurt the source of which is only revealed in the movie's last scene, during which the film descends to truly contemptible emotional brutality.
It is also contemptible that "The Idiots," which was shown two years ago at the Cannes Film Festival and has been released throughout Europe, is being shown in the United States in a compromised and censored version, with solid black squares superimposed over body parts whose display would have earned the film an NC-17 rating.
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The point is not that American audiences need to see genitals, but that they deserve to see movies as filmmakers intended. It's hard to say what's more idiotic: a director who treats his audience like uptight prigs in need of a gratuitous shock, or an industry organization that treats filmgoers like children.
"The Idiots" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).
It includes nudity, sex and gratuitous mockery of the disabled.
THE IDIOTS Written and directed by Lars von Trier; in Danish, with English subtitles; director of photography, Mr. von Trier; edited by Molly Malenecq Stensgaard; produced by Vibeke Windelov; released by USA Films. Running time: 115 minutes. This film is rated R.
WITH: Bodil Jorgensen (Karen), Jens Albinus (Stoffer), Louise Hassing (Susanne) and Troels Lyby (Henrik).,
