“A film should be like a pebble in your shoe,” offers a typically wry Lars Von Trier in this 1987 low budget experiment. It’s his second feature and comes three years after The Element of Crime, yet the two could scarcely be more different. It is however exactly like a pebble in your shoe, as both Von Trier and his screenwriter Niels Vorsel (The KIngdom) play themselves, writing a script about an Epidemic, whilst simultaneously unbeknownst to them, a real plague is spreading across Europe. Made with very little money Epidemic feels like Von Trier’s arrogant belief that he doesn’t need such bothersome things like a plot or script, rather he could just cram in as many ideas as possible and roll the cameras with great results. And that cocky bastard is right too – to some extent. The film has this hastily prepared charm, a certain freeform punk spirit, where you feel that they have, perhaps foreshadowing Von Triers’ The Five Obstructions (2003), constructed a series of almost impossible constraints with only their creativity as a means to escape. Whilst a cameo from screen legend Udo Kier (Suspiria) is always welcome, there’s also what looks like a very real hypnotisim freak-out on film that has to be seen to be believed. Otherwise though there’s about million ideas floating around in this confusing and often willfully odd speed hump in Von Trier’s incredible oeuvre.
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So in the commentary with the stars/writers Von Trier can barely watch it he thinks it’s so terrible. Then there’s a short making of doco where Von Trier’s biographer calls it his student film. It also turns out that the film was a result of a bet between Von Trier and the Danish funding body that he couldn’t make a film for one million Krone (about AU$210,000). He went over budget.
– Bob Baker Fish
