Europa: Night Train
By December 03, 2008
Seduction by locomotive. Gliding on silvery reels of steel, tricked out with Lars von Trier’s stated panoply of “front and back projections, double exposure, and clearly Read more »
SYNOPSIS: “You will now listen to my voice . . . On the count of ten you will be in Europa . . .” So begins Max von Sydow’s opening narration to Lars von Trier’s hypnotic Europa (known in the U.S. as Zentropa), a fever dream in which American pacifist Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr) stumbles into a job as a sleeping-car conductor for the Zentropa railways in a Kafkaesque 1945 postwar Frankfurt. With its gorgeous black-and-white and color imagery and meticulously recreated (if then nightmarishly deconstructed) costumes and sets, Europa is one of the great Danish filmmaker’s weirdest and most wonderful works, a runaway-train ride to an oddly futuristic past.
| Leopold Kessler | Jean-Marc Barr |
| Katharina Hartmann | Barbara Sukowa |
| Lawrence Hartmann | Udo Kier |
| Uncle Kessler | Ernst-Hugo Järegård |
| Siggy | Henning Jensen |
| Pater | Erik Mørk |
| Colonel Harris | Eddie Constantine |
| Narrator | Max von Sydow |
| Director | Lars von Trier |
| Producer | Peter Aalbæk Jensen and Bo Christensen |
| Executive producers | Gerard Mital, Gunnar Obel, Patrick Godeau and François Duplat |
| Screenplay | Lars von Trier and Niels Vørsel |
| Cinematography | Henning Bendtsen, Jean-Paul Meurisse and Edward Klosinsky |
| Production design | Henning Bahs |
| Music | Joakim Holbek |
| Costume designer | Manon Rasmussen |
| Editing | Hervé Schneid |
| Sound designer | Per Streit Jensen |
| Sound recordist | Pierre Excoffier |
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET:
By December 03, 2008
Seduction by locomotive. Gliding on silvery reels of steel, tricked out with Lars von Trier’s stated panoply of “front and back projections, double exposure, and clearly Read more »
By December 02, 2008
Years before he and Thomas Vinterberg issued the well-known Dogme 95 manifesto, Lars von Trier wrote three similarly impassioned artist’s statements, one to accompany each Read more »
October 09, 2009
If you’ve been wondering how on earth Lars von Trier would follow up Antichrist, it may not surprise you that for his next movie, he may be leaving Earth Read more »
January 06, 2009
“Europa is one part Casablanca, two parts Eraserhead, and all parts excellent,” writes Entertainment Weekly in an “A-grade” review of Lars von Trier’s black-and-white Read more »