Zentropa (Criterion Collection, 2-DVD) R

Zentropa (Criterion Collection, 2-DVD)
36 ratings
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Format:  DVD  (2 Discs)
item number:  YXWC
on most orders of $75+
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DVD Details

  • Number of Discs: 2
  • Rated: R
  • Run Time: 1 hours, 47 minutes
  • Video: Black & White / Color
  • Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
  • Released: December 9, 2008
  • Originally Released: 1992
  • Label: Criterion Collection

Performers, Cast and Crew:

Starring
Performer: &
Directed by

Entertainment Reviews:

Fresh80%

TOMATOMETER
...[Von Trier is] fearless in showing off his cinematic know-how....Powerfully played by [Sukowa]...
New York Times
May 22, 1992
...A comic-fantasy nightmare of the wickedest kind. It utilizes high-tech mixed media, audacious rear projection and shifts in pigment... -- 3 1/2 out of 4 stars
USA Today
Jul 22, 1992
It's one part CASABLANCA, two parts ERASERHEAD, and all parts excellent. -- Grade: A
Entertainment Weekly
Dec 19, 2008
...The movie conceals its trump cards smartly, then plays them to full dramatic effect....It is a splendid movie...
Film Comment
Sep 1, 1991
...Striking and visually beautiful...
Chicago Sun-Times
Jul 3, 1992
...It's innovative in its technique....Von Trier works up an inky, hermetic nightmare universe that is visually eloquent...
Los Angeles Times
Jul 17, 1992
...Visually arresting...
Sight and Sound
Oct 1, 2002

Product Description:

Lars von Trier's bizarre yarn concerns Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr), a German American who becomes involved in a surreal nightmare in postwar Germany. Leopold travels to Germany in order to help restore the ravaged countryside. His uncle (Ernst-Hugo Jaregard) gets him a job as a sleeping-car conductor with a giant railway complex called Zentropa. On his first day, Leopold is seduced by Katharina Hartmann (Barbara Sukowa), who just so happens to be the daughter of Zentropa's owner. Leopold blindly falls for Katharina, unaware that she is about to draw him into a maze of suspense and intrigue involving pro-Nazi terrorists.

Opening with a hypnotizing image of rolling train tracks and a somber voice-over by Max Von Sydow, ZENTROPA unfolds calculatedly and ambiguously. Von Trier employs a series of ingenious technical tricks, using rear projection as well as cutting between color and black-and-white, in order to give his film a dazzling visual presentation. The result is a mysterious thriller that will beg for a second viewing once the final credits have rolled.

Description by Image Entertainment:

"You will now listen to my voice...On the count of ten you will be in Europa..." So begins Max von Sydow's opening narration to Lars von Trier's hypnotic Europa (known in the U.S. as Zentropa), a fever dream in which American pacifist Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr) stumbles into a job as a sleeping-car conductor for the Zentropa railways in a Kafkaesque 1945 postwar Frankfurt. With its gorgeous black-and-white and color imagery and meticulously recreated (if then nightmarishly deconstructed) costumes and sets, Europa is one of the great Danish filmmaker's weirdest and most wonderful works, a runaway train ride to an oddly futuristic past.

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Product Info

  • UPC: 715515034029
  • Shipping Weight: 0.29/lbs (approx)
  • International Shipping: 2 items

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