Film Noir Motif in Lars von Trier s Europa

Europa

The film Europa by Lars Trier uses the film noir style to create an aesthetic of moral ambiguity, guilt, and innocence: the theme of the film is found in the overwhelming interplay of these three components—moral ambiguity, guilt, and innocence. Leo represents innocence and naivety. He is plunked into Germany in 1945 as though by the persuasive powers of narrative voice alone. The film is bookended by a hypnotic sequence, the first setting the viewer on a railroad track racing ahead into Europa; the second setting the viewer in the sinking sleeper with Leo as it fills with water and we are told that we will be dead by the count of 10. Trier as an auteur commands the narrative and the spectacle in this way: he is deliberately making a point about the complexities of the film noir tradition and how it raises such overwhelming questions. For a truly innocent character like Leo, the only logical outcome is that innocence will drown.

The priest tells Leo in the first part of the film that God is on both sides of the war and that the only thing God disapproves of is lukewarmness—i.e., an unwillingness to commit oneself. Leo is seduced by the femme fatale Katharina. She confesses that she is a former werewolf of the Germany Party, and it is quite likely that she is using him to carry out another attack on the Allies. Leo is told she has been kidnapped and that to free her he must blow up the train and kill everyone in it. Leo does as he is told, but the narrator’s voice shakes him awake and reminds him that blowing up the train goes against his principle to help people and not to harm them. He goes to dismantle the bomb and ends up becoming the victim of the plot. In short, innocence is lost in Europa when so much fighting is all anyone cares about.

The sequence at the end signifies the psychoanalytical reading of the film in that the voice is the unconscious voice of Leo, compelling him through the film from the opening to the bombing and now to the end wherein he must give up his life. The voice is also, however, outside of Leo: it has some sort of omniscience, particularly when it says, “You want to wake up….to free yourself of the image of Europa. But it will not be possible.” This voice is commanding and damning. As Leo drowns, the viewer drowns with him, unable to escape the car as it fills with water.

And yet in this sequence there is also release—because Leo does ultimately give his life to try to right a wrong, to fix a mistake. He has been seduced by the dark side—a common motif in the film noir genre; but his unconscious voice (the narrator to some extent) also gives him the opportunity to make amends. Yet, being a film noir, there is a degree of fatalism to the film, and the final sequence shows that there is a price to be paid for choosing the wrong side. Leo loses his life—but his body is freed from the submerged car and carried down the river to the open sea, and the tide carries him away from Europa.