The Celebration (Festen)

The first film to be made under the vows of the Dogme 95 manifesto, Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen finds the format lends itself exceptionally well to the raw power of the brutal verbal and physical conflicts at a family gathering of the particularly dysfunctional Klingenfeldt family. In line with the Vows of Chastity, Dogme films must avoid familiar film genre types and “superficial action” like murder plots, so instead they tend to draw their impact from amplifying dramatic situations. At heart, Festen is just a big family melodrama, pushed to extremes as Dogme films consequently often tend to be, but through the nature of its raw documentary-like filming technique it injects an unhealthy dose of reality into the proceedings.

A wealthy upper-class family and their various relatives have gathered for together on their country estate to celebrate the 60th birthday of Helge Klingenfeldt (Henning Moritzen), father of Michael (Thomas Bo Larsen), Helene (Paprika Steen), Christian (Ulrich Thomsen) and Linda, the twin sister of Christian who has recently committed suicide. Returning to stay in the same room her sister died in, Helene finds a hidden note, which appears to have some rather shocking information about her death. It’s not the only surprise that is about to be sprung upon the assembled guests, as the eldest son Christian makes a speech where he reveals a dark family secret that everyone wishes to ignore.

The subject of The Celebration is one that is popular in Danish cinema – a satire or dissection of the Danish upper/middle-class. It’s a subject that the director Per Fly, who appears in the credits here in some capacity, has gone on to examine in a trilogy of films "Bænken (The Bench)", "Arven (The Inheritance)" and "Drabet (The Killing)". Here Vinterberg satirises the hypocrisy, the bigotry and incestuousness of the wealthy upper class and the whole family institution that supports the corrupt edifice, where any behaviour is tolerated as long as it is done with discretion. There is a fine dynamic in both the characters and in the acting styles, with Thomas Bo Larson and Helle Dolleris providing some fine improvisational outbursts, contrasting with a very young-looking and handsome Ulrich Thomsen showing an unsettling sense of underplaying in his icy yet disturbed demeanour, that he has never improved on.

The power of The Celebration however comes undoubtedly from the freedom that working in the Dogme format allows. Freed from having to set up cameras and lights, waiting for conditions and actors to be optimal, Vinterberg - using an inventive, loose and up-close filming approach pioneered by Anthony Dod Mantle - just follows the actors, places them in locations and trusts them to make something of the situations through improvisation. With 60 to 80 hours of material gathered in this way, the hard work then really begins in editing it all down into a coherent plot. It's a risky gambit, but it allows the actors the freedom to improvise and capture the raw power of the occasion, the handheld cameras free to get in close and follow what is happening rather than the actors following camera marks. It's not a particularly new way of filmmaking, but married with the explosive content of the characters in the Klingenfeldt household, Festen made a considerable impact when it premiered at Cannes in 1998 as the flagship film for the Dogme movement. That impact is somewhat lessened today, when handheld Digital filmmaking is more common and filmmakers are prepared to stretch boundaries even further, but The Celebration remains an important film and its influence resounds not only in Danish cinema, but all around the world.

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DVD
This 2005 edition of Festen is released in Scandinavia by Electric Parc as part of a 5-DVD Dogme Kollection, a 10th Anniversary set collecting the first four Dogme 95 films in new prints with numerous extra features. The Danish set of the Dogme Kollection #1-4 can be purchased from DVDoo or Laserdisken for about 299kr (about £27).

Video
The print used for this edition of Festen is a little soft, but then it was shot on video, often with deliberately low-quality cameras and monitors, so it is hardly going to look any better. Consequently, there are flaws like cross-colouration, grain, smeary colours and colour bleed, but that’s all part of the filmmaking approach that allowed the film to have the power it has. It would certainly not have the same impact were it filmed more conventionally and would probably have held the same coldness and distance of Per Fly’s Inheritance (Arven) were it filmed in a more conventional manner. There are a few flecks of dirt and dustspots on the print here and there, but again, little of any consequence. Some of the scenes, particularly scenes in dark rooms, look better in the outtakes included on the Dogme Kollection bonus disc. I can only suspect that this was a consequence of the material not transferring easily to 35mm for theatrical showing. The transfer here however certainly looks slightly sharper than the Canadian Alliance Atlantis edition, which runs to the same length of 110 mins and may consequently be a PAL to NTSC transfer. A comparison is provided below – Alliance Atlantis above, Electric Parc below.

The difference is not that significant, particularly for a film shot on video, but proper subtitles are reason alone for upgrading here, since they are so poor on the Canadian release.

Audio
Again, the audio track is constrained by the Dogme 95 vows to only recording live sound with no post-production overdubbing, and in those circumstances it comes across much better in the Dolby Digital 2.0 mix than would be expected. The sound is always very clear and shows no signs of any flaws or drop-out.

Subtitles
As well as all the Scandanavian languages, English subtitles, in a clear white font, are supplied throughout for the film, for the commentary and for all extra features.

Extras
A good and varied selection of extra features allows the film to be viewed in perspective from a number of angles.

In the full-length Director’s Commentary, Thomas Vinterberg talks about how the characters were build around the actor's own personality and the commentary is likewise built around the characters - who they are, what is going on and how they express themselves. There are a few comments on the techniques used, on how the format was used to explore reality, making the characters go through the experience rather than act it, and how the film was built up through the writing process, through improvisation and through the editing process.

Rukov: A Portrait of a Scriptwriter (57:27) is a documentary on Danish screenwriter Mogens Rukov, following him over a period of time attending conferences, addressing writer’s groups and philosophising about the nature of filmmaking – which might sound dull, but Rukov is a funny character in the old-school style, drinking, smoking and chasing after young women throughout the film.

The director Thomas Vinterberg talks about the fascinating real life (or not) story behind the film in The Disclosure of The Celebration (9:35) with an anecdote about his meeting with the characters involved. The Celebration In Retrospect (28:54) is an excellent feature where cast and crew look back eight years later on the unique experience of making the film, its unexpected success and its impact on their subsequent careers.

Four Deleted Scenes are included - The Pickup (6:39), an excised subplot with a friend of Christian, starring Birgitte Simonsen, Christian’s Insanity (5:41), where the ghost of the dead sister appears in the woods and has an affect on Christian’s subsequent behaviour, including the handing over of The Letter (0:48). An Alternative Ending (2:41) also has a ghostly theme. There are about 30 minutes of more Deleted Scenes on the Bonus Disc of the Dogme Kollection set that this is part of.

The Trailer (1:38) focuses on the film’s winning of the Jury Special Prize at Cannes 1998 and is effective in conveying the menace and suspense of the film.

Overall
In an age where Digital Video has made low-budget, minimalist indie filmmaking much easier to achieve and the subject matter has become more and more hard-hitting, Festen’s punk rock approach to filmmaking no longer has the considerable impact it once had and - just like the Sex Pistols - what once looked challenging and threatening now almost looks nostalgically cute and cuddly. Well, may not quite that conventional... Its pioneering influence and its stretching of boundaries in the filmmaking world, particularly through Anthony Dod Mantle’s experimentation with handheld cameras, cannot be underestimated however, extending beyond Dogme and Danish filmmaking to inform and direct the style and technique of the growing field of DV filmmaking. Its shock impact may have softened slightly with age, but Festen itself remains an invigorating, hard-hitting and influential work of cinema.