The other day I watched the new Lars von Trier film ‘The Boss of it All’. Having been to Denmark on business trips a few times it certainly felt realistic, right down to the casual dress code and informal atmosphere. Fortunately the company I was working for was at the time was considerably less weird. Anyway, this is what I thought about it:

Coming on the heels of notorious films like Dancer in the Dark and Dogville, and with a history of Dogme 95-related experimental techniques, this is a relatively straightforward comedy from Lars von Trier. That is not to say that it is totally conventional, but comedy does lend itself to breaks with convention: just think of the frequent breaking down of the ‘fourth wall’ in Monty Python films.

In this case the avante garde aspect is provided by the ‘Automavision’ filming technique, where the cinematographer chooses his prefered fixed position for the camera and then a computer decides when to zoom, pan or tilt. The result can be actors speaking their lines while only half in the frame, and it is interesting to see their opinions of this technique in the DVD extras. They seem to find it irritating and silly, but put up with it.

The purpose, as far as I understand it, is to increase the realism of the film and I can only think it must work because, even with the director doing his best to emphasise the fictional nature of the film I was still hooked by the story and situation. The film starts with an exterior shot of the office block where the action takes place where the camera is plainly seen in reflections in the windows and the director mentions that you can see him. In an interlude during the film he says how it is all getting too predictable and he thinks he will introduce a new character.

That might sound a little unusual, but really how different is it to having somebody walk into a Monthy Python sketch and say “this is all getting too silly, let’s move on to something else”?

For the film itself, the situation is a brilliant one, which is why the story can withstand such interruptions. The owner of a company does not want the responsibility of being the president so he pretends to just be an employee and invents a president who spends all of his time in the US. In this way he can always be the good guy, blaming any unpopular decisions on the absent ‘boss of it all’.

It all comes apart when the president of an Icelandic company he want to make a deal with insists on dealing personally with the boss of it all and not a sidekick and the owner, Ravn, employs an actor to play the part of the president.

The actor knows nothing about business, and even less about the business of this company – IT – but he is expected to sit through meetings where staff ask him about his philosophy for the firm. That was one brilliant scene which reminded me of every time I have started a new job and found myself in a meeting on day one, wondering what everyone is talking about.

The high concept is so good that I would be amazed if a studio did not try to make a mainstream film on the same premise, like they did with Three Men and a Baby or Birdcage. The worry is that they would somehow end up with a pale imitation of the original as they did in those cases.

The film was made in Denmark, and all the dialogue is in Danish with English sub-titles so it is a little harder to follow and some of the jokes do get lost in translation. For example, the actor’s confusion between HR (Human Resources) and HA (a Danish version of the Hell’s Angels) probably works better for a Danish audience, and a better first-hand knowledge of relationships between Denmark and Iceland would make the negotiations scenes more meaningful, but even so the film is very accessible and enjoyable.

The story rapidly turns farcical when the actor realises that Ravn has been telling the staff all sorts of things about the fictional president, and even sending e-mails to staff from him and he has not told the actor about any of this back story. To make matters worse, at different times he has told different staff conflicting ‘facts’. All of this makes it a greater challenge for an actor who is obsessed with playing a role according to the precepts of Gambini, who I assume to be a fictional playwright.

Overall I found the film immensely enjoyable in its own right and I am already anticipating the plesure to be had from sitting through the inevitable Hollywood re-make and saying “of course, the original was much better.”