THE BOSS OF IT ALL

Written and Directed by: Lars von Trier
Starring: Jens Albinus, Ravn, Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, Benedikt Erlingsson, Iben Hjejle
Distributed by Paramount Pictures

Film was released Feb, 29th 2008.

Review by James Rawson

To describe writing and directing an office comedy as an unexpected move from Lars Von Trier would be something of a colossal understatement. This is the man made famous for tackling the issues surrounding rape, insanity, slavery, gang-bangs of the mentally retarded etc. Still, the Danish prankster delights in nothing more than shocking his audience, and that is certainly what he has done with his latest work.

When establishing his IT firm, businessman Ravn made a somewhat unconventional decision. Rather than have himself held responsible for all the hirings, firings, and unpopular corporate policies, he decided to invent a company president to assume these responsibilities, and absolve himself of any disfavour: the eternal bad cop to his good.

Now, several successful years on, Ravn wants to sell his company to cantankerous Icelandic Finnur, and reap the financial rewards. Unfortunately for Ravn, there is one small problem: the ever elusive, and wholly fictitious, Boss of it All must be present at the negotiations. In order to make the deal possible, Ravn hires out of work, but highly pretentious thespian Kristoffer to play the titular character, and oversee the handover. However, having assumed his role and ingratiated himself with the IT firm’s staff, Kristoffer finds himself in a difficult position: will he expose the truth about Ravn’s lies and let them know who is, in fact, the Boss Of It All?

With his first comedy, Von Trier has undoubtedly taken a sidestep thematically, but Dogme 95 fans will be relieved to hear that it is stylistically Von Trier through and through. In fact, the level of Von Trierness may even have been upped slightly as his trademark jumpcut editing and slightly disconcerting camerawork have, apparently, been selected at random by a computer programme called Automavision. If this is actually true remains unknown – as with all of his public statements, Von Trier’s mischievous reputation precedes him, so one is never quite sure what to believe.

Nonetheless, the film looks superb, and boast a premise that, on paper at least, has strong comic potential. Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily translate into good comedy. In fact, it doesn’t. Much of the film’s humour is derived from Denmark and Iceland’s strained relationship, and their perceived national stereotypes. While this may be nothing short of hilarious to the Danish general public, it isn’t a comedy that travels particularly well. To make matters worse, Von Trier occasionally tries his hand at post-modernist self-referencing (one of his characters can be heard saying ‘life isn’t a Dogme film’), which feels a lot more clumsy than funny. A couple of supporting characters get some good running jokes (in particular the hysterical photocopier-phobe Mette), but that’s about all you’ll take away in terms of actual laughs.

But while The Boss of It All may not be a great comedy, Von Trier is always fascinating to watch at work, and there are hidden depths that make the film worthy of attention. The character of Kristoffer, the self-important thespian, reveals something of Von Trier’s attitude to his actors (he is notoriously hard on his cast), as does his study of the employer – employee relationship, which is clearly analogous to his own role as director. And when Von Trier himself as the narrator is disparaging of ‘artsy-fartsy culture’, he betrays far more of himself than a lifetime of Dogvilles.

So the lesson from The Boss of it All may be: Lars, stick to what you’re good at. And with the release of 2009’s Wasington (the sequel to Dogville and Manderlay) one suspects that he will be doing just that. But this brief foray in to the world of comedy, while not wholly successful, is worthy of a watch, and does add another dimension to a still highly exciting and innovative director.

Thanks for visiting us at Obsessed With Film, we update several times a day, so if you haven't done so yet you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also sign up to receive updates via e-mail.