Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Thehibikiew Not even bad in a good way

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

William O. Tyler I shall now count from 1 to 10. On the count of 10, we shall have reviewed Europa. I say 1. Lars Von Trier's finale to his Europa Trilogy focusing on crisis in Europe is aptly titled Europa. It's a more straight forward film than the director's usual fare, being more of a take on classic cinema than his others. 2. That certainly doesn't stop it, however, from being quite an experiment in time, space and even color within the medium and creating some hauntingly memorable scenes and shots.3. Europa is very Hitchcockian. It builds tension through story and character, but is able to successfully mimic that tension visually. 4. Trust no one. Trust nothing. Anything could be as real as what's on the projection screen behind you. The movie hits a sort of lull early on while developing the story and characters, and is seemingly nothing special apart from being an exceptional call back to older political espionage films. The filming and acting style as well as the general script is all more than evocative of the popular film noir movies of the 40s and 50s. The sets are lavish, the romance is melodramatic and it's full of all of those old clichés. It is nostalgic for movies long since gone. Then, ever so slightly, every once in awhile, it reminds you that this is no ordinary film. Your narrator gives you a new task and 5. counts you down again, or an object will mysteriously pop up in color against this black and white film.6. The film feels old but is interestingly brought about by new methods. Lars Von Trier is playing with contradictions here, keeping you on your toes about what's real and what's not. He's playing with the languages being spoken in the film, moving from English to German and back again, sometimes in the middle of sentences. He's playing with the black and white nature of the story with color that creeps in at odd moments. 7. He's playing with whether this is the real world, or a dream, not only visually, but with the voice of God directing you as a viewer through this adventure, as if a director is calling out your actions to you on a film set.8. He's definitely playing with expanding the small, claustrophobic spaces within the tight corridors of the moving train inside which most of the film takes place, into huge spaces by way of using a back projected screen. Acting in front of and interacting with an actual projection screen with moving images instead of standing in front of a green or blue screen and having items added later means that these masterful shots must be perfectly composed, and surely rehearsed, just to line up correctly or else fall completely apart. It's a rather fantastic effect.9. In a way, and especially by the film's end, Europa is a film for the senses, with visual cues that turn in every direction, stimulating story, a often intense backing score and hypnotizing audio. As these elements move through the film, and move you through the film, it's like going in and out of consciousness. Europa is an incredible experience that manages to make something as serious as Nazi Germany a fun and intriguing ride. And within it all, Von Trier even gives himself a small cameo in pure Hitchcock fashion. 10. Experience Europa.

Dickhead_Marcus_Halberstram Lars von Trier's Europa is a worthy echo of The Third Man, about an American coming to post-World War II Europe and finds himself entangled in a dangerous mystery.Jean-Marc Barr plays Leopold Kessler, a German-American who refused to join the US Army during the war, arrives in Frankfurt as soon as the war is over to work with his uncle as a sleeping car conductor on the Zentropa Railway. What he doesn't know is the war is still secretly going on with an underground terrorist group called the Werewolves who target American allies. Leopold is strongly against taking any sides, but is drawn in and seduced by Katharina Hartmann (Barbara Sukowa), the femme fatale daughter of the owner of the railway company. Her father was a Nazi sympathizer, but is pardoned by the American Colonel Harris (Eddie Considine) because he can help get the German transportation system up and running again. The colonel soon enlists, or forces, Leopold to be a spy (without giving him a choice or chance to think about it) to see if the Werewolves might carry out attacks on the trains.Soon, Leopold is stuck in an adventure by being involved with both sides of the conflict in a mysterious and film noir-ish way, where everyone and everything is not what it seems. Its amazing to watch the naive Leopold deal with everything (his lover, the terrorists, the colonel, annoying passengers, his disgruntled uncle, even the railway company's officials who come to examine his work ethic) before he finally boils over and humorously and violently takes control. The film is endlessly unpredictable.The film stylishly shot, it always takes place at night during the winter with lots of falling snow. Its shot in black and white with shots of color randomly appearing throughout. Also, background screens displaying images that counter act with the images up front. Add Max von Sydow's hypnotic narration, and Europa becomes a dreamlike place that's out of this world.This is now a personal favorite film of mine.

Graham Greene Concluding the trilogy of films that began almost a decade earlier with the dark, industrial influenced film-noir experiment The Element of Crime (1984) and continuing with the largely unseen experimental horror-satire Epidemic (1987), this multi-layered, visually expressive post-war thriller finds precocious auteur Lars von Trier in his cinematic element; creating a mind bending and deeply hallucinogenic film-noir appropriation that references sources as diverse as Hitchcock, Bergman, Welles and Murnau, to create a myriad of expressionistic images, philosophies and moments of heart-stopping tension.As with his later, more widely seen work, such as Breaking the Waves (1996) and The Idiots (1998), von Trier structures the film with a complete disregard for mainstream movie conventions - not just throwing out the cinematic rule book, but proudly stampeding it - as he strings together scene after scene of ethereal beauty; all backed by the haunting and distinctive narration of Max Von Sydow and the thrilling music of Joakim Holbek. The result is a film like no other; revelling in pretension and cinematic excess; Europa (1991) knows exactly what it is and raises a middle finger to anyone who refuses to buy into its central ideology. In keeping with the director's earlier works, the plot of Europa is threadbare, but never less than interesting; as Jean Marc Barr's bookish American goes back to Germany in the wake of World War II to discover his roots and lend a hand in the rebuilding of the country. Barr's character, Leopold Kessler, is a brazenly idealistic young man, peering out from behind his spectacles with wide eyes as he bravely suffers ridicule and contempt from all around him. Amongst this central narrative device we have the usual film-noir conventions of shadowy businessmen, the femme-fatale, etc. However, the film always comes back to von Trier's central ideology. If we have learned anything from the director's work, it is the ultimate image of the idealist being brought slowly to their knees and eventually destroyed. In both Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark (2000), von Trier concludes that those who live in false hope will sooner or later be smashed by a manipulative and unloving system.His most successful realisation of this was with the aforementioned Dancer in the Dark, in which he mixed elements of melodrama and musical theatre with social-realist concerns to create a somewhat misguided indictment of the American judicial system within the context of a 1950's cinematic universe. His most controversial film, Breaking the Waves, again saw the destruction of a central martyr, with the childlike Emily Watson sacrificing her body to Christ - and various lecherous old men - in order to cure her crippled husband. With Europa, von Trier would lay the groundwork for these following films, whilst once again condemning the American's shallow, self-riotous image and animosity in the face of war (though perhaps more multi-faceted than that one-line assessment might suggest). The director also throws in ideas of fascism, terrorism and a hearty helping of post-modern references, though all in the name of cinematic experimentation, high style and unashamed visual manipulation.Shot in a sort of off black and white - meaning that the images have been given a silvery blue tint, with deeply rich shadows - and framed in anamorphic cinemascope, Europa twists and turns with one jaw-dropping set piece after another. A simple assassination sequence is drawn out using forced perspectives, colour juxtaposition and rear screen projection to dizzying effect, and the way that the camera cranes and tracks, constantly offering us layer upon layer of visual symbolism is truly amazing. The iconography is bold, yet slightly clear-cut in comparison to the courageous departures that von Trier made with his earlier film The Element of Crime. Here we have he an expressionistic vision of Europe in severe decline, with Germany attempting to claw themselves out of the ashes and regain power as an important society (leading up to the eventual economic miracle of the early 1950's). Some have criticized Barr's character for not being heroic enough, missing the point of the film entirely. Kessler isn't supposed to be the hero, but rather a patsy or a puppet. He's an American going back to a country that his own military helped destroy, representing arrogant idealism; pointing out Germany's own weaknesses and posturing to gain acceptance. This is a much bleaker film once we start dealing with the issues of sub-text, as the scene that prefigures a prominent funeral will attest. For me, this is a stirring and imaginative film dealing with themes such as deception, manipulation and eventually, corruption.With Europa, von Trier has structured a beautifully designed and thematically quite gripping thriller with both political and cinematic reference points in abundance. Most filmmakers would be terrified to put the viewer to sleep within the first five minutes, but Europa takes up that challenge, using Von Sydow's haunting voice to lull the viewer into a state of assumed hypnosis. Needless to say the film employs ideas of dream-logic, unfolding subjectively and expressionistically from the central character's point of view. The is a film that will linger long in the mind of anyone who experiences it, as the closing moments leave the audience adrift at sea, or as lost as Leopold Kessler. As Von Sydow observes in the film's closing narration; "we want to wake up, to leave behind the images of Europa... but it is not possible".

Claudio Carvalho On October of 1945, the American German descendant Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr) arrives in a post-war Frankfurt and his bitter Uncle Kessler (Ernst-Hugo Järegård) gets a job for him in the Zentropa train line as a sleeping car conductor. While traveling in the train learning his profession, he sees the destructed occupied Germany and meets Katharina Hartmann (Barbara Sukowa), the daughter of the former powerful entrepreneur of transport business and owner of Zentropa, Max Hartmann (Jørgen Reenberg). Leopold stays neutral between the allied forces and the Germans, and becomes aware that there is a terrorist group called "Werewolves" killing the sympathizers of the allied and conducting subversive actions against the allied forces. He falls in love for Katharina, and sooner she discloses that she was a "Werewolf". When Max commits suicide, Leopold is also pressed by the "Werewolves" and need to take a position and a decision."Europa" is an impressive and anguishing Kafkanian story of the great Danish director Lars von Trier. Using an expressionist style that recalls Fritz Lang and alternating a magnificent black & white cinematography with some colored details, this movie discloses a difficult period of Germany and some of the problems this great nation had to face after being defeated in the war. Very impressive the action of the occupation forces destroying resources that could permit a faster reconstruction of a destroyed country, and the corruption with the Jew that should identify Max. Jean-Marc Barr has an stunning performance in the role of man that wants to stay neutral but is manipulated everywhere by everybody. The hypnotic narration of Max Von Sydow is another touch of class in this awarded film. My vote is nine.Title (Brazil): "Europa"