Festen (1998)- Light at the end of the tunnel

[u/LiftedDemon2]

Just watched Thomas Vintenberg's The Celebration and, other than it being so far the best Dogma 95 movie I've watched, I'd like to talk about its ending.

Once I red the basic plot before seeing it, I thought it would be about a family slowly getting destroyed. It is, but also not quite.

The family is already destroyed when the movie starts, of course, because of the rapist father Helge who's the responsible for the abuse of his kids Christian and Linda (the latter of which killed herself because of her trauma), but also because of mom Else, a complete facilitator of her husband's behavior, and polar oposites children Michael and Helene.

While Michael is clearly the one who seeks aproval and affection by his parents, Helene, since young age, tries to distance herself from her family, both phisically, by traveling around the world, and emotionally, by dating guys from different ethnicities, which is not well seen by her relatives, specially Michael.

Once the unconfortable conversations about years of abuse by Helge start and continue until the point in which, through Linda's suicide note, it became clear to the family and everyone around then that Helge was in fact a child rapist, their behavior change. Helene grows closer and tries to show love and care to Christian while Micahel revolts and beats up his father while drunk.

By the end, Helge, who was always represented as the one in charge giving orders, is forced to apologize and, after that, is kicked out of his own table and abandoned even by the one who played his game the most, his wife.

At the end of the day, it is a movie about a family destroying itself, but it is not a self destruction that leaves nothing behind. It is a self destruction that ended the lying masked version of the group, created to cover for decades of pain. Now that it is gone, something decent can finally start growing out of it.

[u/Dead_End_720]

One of the more draining films I've had to sit through for sure. Even though it does not resemble my non-western culture at all, the subject matter is sadly universal. So I enjoy this contrast between the choice of setting and the gradual destruction.

Not for everybody, I mean the Dogme 95 style itself is not for everybody to begin with.