The first blog post:
Festen/The Celebration (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998)
Quote: Thomas Vinterberg said: “I think the family is an institution that you cannot avoid, biologically or culturally. It is there to be there. You can try to create the illusion that ‘I've left my family’, but it will always be there, and the ghosts will always be there…I think people have tried, especially young sons and daughters raging against their fathers and mothers, have tried to break out of their families, but at the end of the day, it's still the family, and at the end of the day it is the great value also of this film that the family does everything they have in their hands to keep this structure, even though they have to oppress a poor son who has been abused by the father.It's a strength -- you also have to watch it that way. I know that's very cynical to say, but I think for me that's how it is, and that's why, if you watch this film, something awful happens all the time and the structure keeps on going: They say ‘Let's have our coffee’, and everything is back. And Christian tries to destroy it again, and it gets into shape again” (Wood, 1999,p.51).
It is unrealistic to oppose the existence of the family. Even though there are many people in the family who are suffering from varying degrees of oppression or harm, many of them are still trying to keep their family together. However, even if they escape and are relieved, the family will always be there. This point of view of the director is also reflected in the film, where both the mother, Else, the sister, Helene and the brother, Michael try to maintain the reputation and integrity of the family, even though family members,Christian and Linda, have been abused by the father, Helge.
The sister, Helene
Helene found Linda's suicide note based on the markings left by her,which mentions that their father had raped Linda and Christian, but Helene chose to hide it after reading the letter.
Moreover, she tried to maintain the continuity of the birthday ceremony,without prompting, clearly denied to the guests that Christian had been molested, and apologized for her brother's mental state after Christian's initial speech (Goss, 2009).
The mother, Else
The mother, who appears to know nothing, actually witnessed her husband's sexual abuse of her son and daughter. As a bystander, her connivance was no less damaging to her son and daughter than the physical violence inflicted by the father. After Christian reveals the fact that Helge molested him and Linda, his mother makes him apologize on the grounds that he frustrated his father by not being able to distinguish between reality and fantasy. According to Gross(2009), the mother actively endorses and engages as a deputy in the expression of the obvious injustice of ultra-patriarchal ideology until the moment of its demise on the estate.
The brother, Michael
Michael has made great efforts to keep his family together, both with his parents and with his wife and children. During an argument with a waitress with whom he had once had an affair, Michael hit her and said: “Don’t diss my family”.
Unlike Else and Helene, Michael had no evidence of Christian's molestation by his father, so he chose to defend his father’s reputation.Martin (2003) states that in this role, the tension created by the “finding and hiding” of the truth is brought to the fullest. On Christian's third accusation against their father at the party,Michael threw him out and said: “You are way out of line”, which was also meant to be a warning that what Christian was doing was destructive to the family.
After Helene read Linda's suicide note, Michael learned the truth and beat up Helge. Chanter (2004) claims that Michael was disillusioned by his father's symbolic collapse.
The next day Helge apologized over the breakfast and was then asked by Michael to leave so they can have breakfast. The father is gone but the family is still there, just in a different form, no longer authoritarian and patriarchal and seemingly more equal. The indescribable costs were emphasized in a close-up to the meditative Christian at the end, as he did not smile or gloat after the victory (Goss, 2009). This might be a relief for Christian, but the family is still there, the ghost of his sister is still there, and the trauma in his heart is still there.
The second blog post:
The film I choose for the second blog post is Submarino which is directed by the same director Thomas Vinterberg as Festen. Both films embody the theme: childhood trauma and its lasting effects.
In the film Festen, for Christian, his father's prolonged molestation of him and his sister during his childhood left Christian with severe childhood trauma. The conversation with his father in the darkened room before the party begins reveals Christian's extreme discomfort at being alone with him, as he was constantly rubbing his hands together and tearing up paper to relieve his unease.
In addition, one of the conversations with his father reveals that Christian lacked talent with women and feared intimacy due to childhood trauma.According to Martin (2003), Heterosexuality will only make sense to Christian when his despair alleviates by the revelation of the horror of incest. This is why, at the end of the film, he had the courage to ask Pia if she want to come to Paris and live with him.
For Michael, he displays adversarial, inappropriate and/or violent behavior with every other role he encounters. Despite not being directly harmed by his father, from the opening minutes, Michael is a primal symptom of domestic abuse and its incomplete suppression (Goss, 2009).
In the film Submarino, Nick and his brother's childhood trauma came not only from a violent, alcoholic mother who ignored them all day, but most of all from the death of their baby brother, Martin, as a result of their drunken carelessness. They loved this brother so much that they had the decency to christen and name him.
The guilt over the death of their baby brother continued throughout their lives. Nick relied on alcohol to numb himself, while Nick's brother became a drug addict, his wife died in a car accident so he was left alone with his son, who he also named Martin.
Of the two, Nick is the one who feels more guilty. After asking for his brother's mobile number, Nick got up the courage to call, and heard his brother's son's voice on the other end of the line, no one knows if it's because it sounds like his brother’s life was much happier than his own, or because he was thinking of his departed younger brother, Martin. Nick hung up the phone and violently slammed his fist into the phone booth. According to García Orso(2011), the wounds on Nick's hands from hitting the phone booth, which neither heal nor want to heal, clearly symbolize the burden of unforgivable guilt.
Unlike Nick, his brother is gentle, especially when it comes to his son Martin, who is all he lives for. However, his arrest for drug trafficking has made him completely desperate for his life.
When Nick met his brother in prison, he said to Nick: “I don't think it was our fault, you were a good brother”, and then chose to suicide, which was a relief for him.
At the end of the film, Nick's necrotic hand was amputated as a sign of his redemption from loneliness and guilt (García Orso, 2011).
In both films, the protagonists end up accomplishing redemption and deliverance in their own way, however, the trauma of their childhood is still indelible.
References:
Chanter, T. (2004). The Pictureof Abjection: Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Celebration.” Parallax, 10(1),30–39. https://doi-org.ez.xjtlu.edu.cn/10.1080/1353464032000171064
García Orso, L. (2011). Submarino.Xipe Totek, 20(3), 289–290.
Goss, B.M. (2009). REBEL YELL: The Politics of The Celebration/Festen (1998). Studies in European Cinema, 6(2-3), pp.215-227.
Hald, B., & Kaufmann, M. (Producer), & Vinterberg, T.(Screenwriter/ Director), & Rukov, M. (Screenwriter) (1998). Festen [Motion Picture]. Denmark & Sweden: Nimbus Film Productions.
Martin, L. P. D. (2003). THOMAS VINTERBERG’S FESTEN (1998):An attempt to avoid madness through denunciation. In A. Sabbadini (Ed.),The Couch and the Silver Screen: Psychoanalytic Reflections on European Cinema (pp.94-99). New York: Brunner-Routledge
Wood, P. R. (1999, January). Humble guests at the celebration: an interview with. Thomas Vinterbergand Ulrich Thomsen. CineAction, 14(48), 47-54.
