Festen

film review (Taken and adjusted from an essay I am writing for my European Comedy and Satire course):

The Celebration is a disturbing film that successfully draws on its dark aspects to create a story around the taboo subject of incest and the comedy within. Through utilizing the simplified filming techniques of Dogme 95 and by candidly embracing its themes, the film creates an unsettling intimate atmosphere to satirically examine and display the dysfunctions of an upper-class family. The outcome is a film that ultimately proves to be successful at becoming darkly comedic through a conscious and well-created balance between style and narrative.
What proves to be the most important element of The Celebration is the interaction of the characters. In a certain sense, the film is about oppressed individuals attempting to overcome their problems. However, it is through the interactions of all the characters involved that proves to be the key element in helping the story take shape and become entirely horrific and yet wholly absurd and comedic.
This effect is heightened by the film's technical aspects. The unsteady camera work makes the viewer feel directly involved within the film and the characters. However, Vinterberg never lets you feel at ease within the group. Rather, he places you intimately at a seat amongst the rest of the guest and makes you feel awkwardly apart of the scene. Through the shaky camera and close up shots at face-level, the viewer is forced to almost be apart of something that they should not be while simultaneously feeling the same discomfort as some of the characters.
This is also emphasized by the lack of soundtrack throughout its entirety. A musical accompaniment in a film is often utilizes as an indicator or to emphasis a specific emotion being played out upon the screen. The Celebration’s lack thereof proves to only naturally heighten such emotional sentiments. Vinterberg allows the low murmur of conversation and the awkward clinking of dinnerware to be the only indication of the looming emotional reactions of the dinner guest. The lack of musical score in such scenes adds additional elements of realism that Vinterberg is quick to utilize in obtaining an amplified sense of shock, anxiety and embarrassment. Such reactions leak out of the screen and seem to infect the viewer, which further heightens the strange comedy of the tragic situation.
At moments, Vinterberg also allows the viewer to be a voyeur rather than closely involved. It is at these scenes that the film sprinkles comedic elements to make the tragic and vulgar subject matter slightly endurable. These brief interludes often act as a comedic relief. When compared to the greater context of the film, they prove to only further reveal the genius of The Celebration’s ability to find humor within that which is entirely tragic. This causes the film to be all that more disquieting and yet entirely brilliant.
Suggested for fans of Lars von Trier and those wishing Todd Solondz films were a little bit more raw.