The "Manifesto for the Dogme 95 film movement states in bold letters "DOGME 95 is a rescue action!" (von Trier and Vinterburg). The "Brothers" of the Dogme 95 movement are out to save cinema from what it has become: an overly polished, undemocratic art form that has severed its ties to reality in favor of the superficiality that the form allows. The movement also stands as a statement to other directors to take control of their art and to inform them that there are other ways to make a film besides the modes of production which have become conventions, i.e. those of Hollywood films. Superficiality is the enemy of Dogme 95 and to combat this enemy, the "Brothers" established ten rules by which a director must swear to follow, for better or for worse, if their film is to be certified as a Dogme 95 film. The rules, titled "The Vow Of Chastity," have to do with the processes associated with the making of the film, not with content or editing styles as the guidelines of former film movements have focused on. Another departure from film movements of the past is the fact that Dogme 95 knows no borders. This important movement had its beginnings in Denmark but today it includes works from countries and cultures as far apart and diverse as Korea and Argentina. In order to critique the movement and provide textual examples in this paper, I will examine two Dogme 95 films, Mifune (1999) from Denmark and Julien donkey-boy (1999) from the USA, two films which, as I intend to show, stand as metaphors for filmmaking in the Dogme 95 tradition.

Mifune is the third film to come out of the movement. The story of Mifune centers on Kresten, an up-and-coming executive in Copenhagen. The morning after his wedding, he receives a phone call informing him of the death of his father. He is forced to leave his new life in the city and return to his roots, the simple country home of his childhood. Once there, Kresten must make choices about what to do with his life now that he is responsible for the home and for his mentally disabled brother. Kresten tells many lies to keep his old life separate from his new life and that is what eventually leads to the unraveling of the story. Kresten’s return to his roots can serve as a metaphor for the Dogme 95 movement. For most of the directors involved in the early stages of the movement, Dogme 95 was an exercise in returning to their roots as filmmakers and to the roots of film. When the director of Mifune, Søren Kraugh-Jacobsen, was asked why he decided to make a Dogme film, he replied, comparing himself to a musician, " In every musician'slife there comes and time and place where you want to go back to basics, where you want to play unplugged. That's what Dogme 95 is about." The call regarding the death of the father is also significant in that it mirrors the call the founders of the movement were addressing in their "Manifesto" when they wrote: "The movie was dead and called for resurrection" (von Trier and Vinterburg). The call pulled Kresten out of his comfortable, modern life and forced him to return to his beginnings and resurrect his essence. In an interview, the director also hints at parallels in the story to his professional career when Mifune came into his life:

In what seems a contradiction in terms, the constraints of Dogme 95 allowed the director to return to his spontaneity just as, in the film, the constraints of country life and familial responsibility allowed Kresten to achieve a freedom that life in the city, with all of its complications, could not. As free as he felt within the rules, Kragh-Jacobsen, in his "Confession," admitted to making "one genuine breach of the rules" and a few "moral transgressions" while making the film. The certification committee overlooked these breaches and the film was certified with little or no dissent. A Dogme 95 film that was not so lucky in that regard was Julien donkey-boy, the sixth Dogme 95 film.
The controversy around Julien donkey-boy was enough that the Dogme "Brothers" felt compelled to release a press statement in defense of the certification of the film which read as follows:

This press release, as well as the film itself, demonstrates that, despite what some critics might say, Dogme 95 does not encroach on the flexibility of the director to make the choices that make cinema art. By breaking certain rules, Korine challenges the movement and its founders, to reconsider their strong commitment to uniformity in much the same way the "Brothers" were challenging the film industry when the "Vow of Chastity" was written. If the movement were to progress and include more films, concessions and allowances would ahve to be made to keep the movement interesting.
Just as Mifune followed a simple, easy-to-follow narrative, Julien donkey-boy adapts a confrontational narrative that forces the spectator to work at comprehending the images and plot developments put before them. In keeping with the fact that the title character of the film is schizophrenic, the film was constructed accordingly through the use of jump-cut editing, slow motion sequences, and the striking aesthetic that digital video provides. In reference to plot, there is little that one can anticipate or take away from the film except that the spectator is often left to feel as out of touch with reality as Julien, which is not a bad thing considering the bleak environment that is depicted. The story seems to follow the exploits of Julien as his life goes from bad to worse, beginning with the murder of a young boy and ending with the deth of his own baby. A sad cast of characters, including his sister Pearl who is pregnant with his child, a drunken, abusive father, a disabled support group, and Chrissy, a young blind girl, surrounds Julien and they help him forward the movement of the film, if not the plot. The film takes the rules of Dogme 95 a step further to include found scenes and dialogue along with the requirements of natural lighting and location shooting. This was achieved by the use of hidden cameras in public places wth people who were not actors. These are the most striking scenes of the film because they achieve the aim of the movement to eliminate superficiality from the film because they exude a sense of innocence. The innovations of the film make it an interesting and important addition to the Dogme 95 catalogue of films.

In an exchange of dialogue between Chrissy and Pearl in Julien donkey-boy, Chrissy states, "I used to think that I could see a lot but I found out that I couldn’t see very much … that my vision was almost slim to none." To this Pearl responds, "So if nobody had ever told you then you would never even know." Chrissy says, reflectively, "No, I thought I could really see, like almost normal sight but I found out I’m not even close" (Korine). This reflects the idea that attracts directors from all over the world to conform to the principals of the Dogme 95 movement. They realize that the freedom that modern film technology has provided them is no freedom at all and they see the logic in the "Brothers" assertion that "Discipline is the answer ... we must put our films into uniform, because the individual film will be decadent by definition!" (von Trier and Vinterburg) If it were not for the creation of the Dogme 95 movement, directors like Kragh-Jacobsen and Korine might have thought their personal technique and vision were without flaw. Such directors might never have taken the time to stand back and reflect on how they make films and question whether or not there was a more "honest" way to do it.

Works Cited

Iverson, Ebbe. "Interview with Søren Kraugh-Jacobsen." Online. Internet. 11 Feb. 2002. Available: tvropa.com/tvropa1.2/film/dogme95/menu/menuset.htm.

Julien donkey-boy. Dir. Harmony Korine. With Ewan Bremner and Chloe Sevigny. Independent Pictures, 1999.

Kraugh-Jacobsen, Søren. "FAQ." Online. Internet. 11 Feb. 2002. Available: tvropa.com/tvropa1.2/film/dogme95/menu/menuset.htm.

___________________. "Confession." Online. Internet. 11 Feb. 2002. Available: tvropa.com/tvropa1.2/film/dogme95/menu/menuset.htm.

Mifune. Dir. Søren Kraugh-Jacobsen. With Anders Berthelson. Nimbus Film Productions, 1999.

von Trier, Lars and Thomas Vinterburg. "Manifesto." Online. Internet. 11 Feb. 2002. Available: tvropa.com/tvropa1.2/film/dogme95/menu/menuset.htm.

________________________________. "Press Release." Online. Internet. 11 Feb. 2002. Available: tvropa.com/tvropa1.2/film/dogme95/menu/menuset.htm.