Europa
Europa
R | 22 May 1992 (USA)
Europa Trailers

A young, idealist American gets a job as a train conductor for the Zentropa railway network in postwar, US-occupied Frankfurt. As various people try to take advantage of him, he soon finds his position politically sensitive, and gets caught up in a whirlpool of conspiracies and Nazi sympathisers.

Reviews
Listonixio

Fresh and Exciting

... View More
Allison Davies

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

... View More
Kaelan Mccaffrey

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

... View More
Fleur

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

... View More
gogoschka-1

Lars von Trier's portrayal of post-war Germany is an exercise in visual beauty. Think of the infamous Danish "agent provocateur" what you will - his films certainly never fail to leave a lasting impression. This one is perhaps his most accessible effort to date. 8 stars out of 10.In case you're interested in more underrated masterpieces, here's some of my favorites:imdb.com/list/ls070242495

... View More
William O. Tyler

I shall now count from 1 to 10. On the count of 10, we shall have reviewed Europa. I say 1. Lars Von Trier's finale to his Europa Trilogy focusing on crisis in Europe is aptly titled Europa. It's a more straight forward film than the director's usual fare, being more of a take on classic cinema than his others. 2. That certainly doesn't stop it, however, from being quite an experiment in time, space and even color within the medium and creating some hauntingly memorable scenes and shots.3. Europa is very Hitchcockian. It builds tension through story and character, but is able to successfully mimic that tension visually. 4. Trust no one. Trust nothing. Anything could be as real as what's on the projection screen behind you. The movie hits a sort of lull early on while developing the story and characters, and is seemingly nothing special apart from being an exceptional call back to older political espionage films. The filming and acting style as well as the general script is all more than evocative of the popular film noir movies of the 40s and 50s. The sets are lavish, the romance is melodramatic and it's full of all of those old clichés. It is nostalgic for movies long since gone. Then, ever so slightly, every once in awhile, it reminds you that this is no ordinary film. Your narrator gives you a new task and 5. counts you down again, or an object will mysteriously pop up in color against this black and white film.6. The film feels old but is interestingly brought about by new methods. Lars Von Trier is playing with contradictions here, keeping you on your toes about what's real and what's not. He's playing with the languages being spoken in the film, moving from English to German and back again, sometimes in the middle of sentences. He's playing with the black and white nature of the story with color that creeps in at odd moments. 7. He's playing with whether this is the real world, or a dream, not only visually, but with the voice of God directing you as a viewer through this adventure, as if a director is calling out your actions to you on a film set.8. He's definitely playing with expanding the small, claustrophobic spaces within the tight corridors of the moving train inside which most of the film takes place, into huge spaces by way of using a back projected screen. Acting in front of and interacting with an actual projection screen with moving images instead of standing in front of a green or blue screen and having items added later means that these masterful shots must be perfectly composed, and surely rehearsed, just to line up correctly or else fall completely apart. It's a rather fantastic effect.9. In a way, and especially by the film's end, Europa is a film for the senses, with visual cues that turn in every direction, stimulating story, a often intense backing score and hypnotizing audio. As these elements move through the film, and move you through the film, it's like going in and out of consciousness. Europa is an incredible experience that manages to make something as serious as Nazi Germany a fun and intriguing ride. And within it all, Von Trier even gives himself a small cameo in pure Hitchcock fashion. 10. Experience Europa.

... View More
gavin6942

Just after World War II, an American takes a railway job in Germany, but finds his position politically sensitive with various people trying to use him.I waited too long to write this review, so I cannot do it justice until a second viewing. But it is a perfect storm of European genius. Max von Sydow narrating, Udo Kier appearing (as he does in many of von Trier's works). And the amalgamation of Europe on a train...What sells this film is the visuals, hands down. Von Trier's mix of black and white and classic color give this quite the dreamlike feel. That, mixed with the Kafkaesque plot, and you are sucked into an imaginary world of real life... perhaps not unlike David Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch".

... View More
dromasca

I cannot stay indifferent to Lars van Trier's films. I consider 'Breaking the Waves' nothing less than a masterpiece. I loved 'Dancer in the Night'. I admired the idea in 'Dogville' but the overall exercise looked to me too dry and too theatrical, less cinema. 'Europa' which I see only now was a famous film at its time, succeeded in the US the relative success of an European film and got the Oscar for the best foreign language movie, but did not survive well the time in my opinion. It is also a too much explicit and extrovert exercise in cinema art to my taste.The story has a level of ambiguity that cannot escape the viewer. Treating the period that immediately followed the second world war not in the black and white colors of victors and vanquished, of executioners and victims but as rather ambiguous times when people of both sides were fighting for survival in the aftermath of a catastrophic event that change the lives of nations and individuals forever is still a source of disputes even today, more such was novel and courageous two decades ago. Yet it is the means of expression that really do not appear fit to the task.The film seems to include a lot of quotes descending directly from the films of Hitchcock, especially his early films set in the pre-war Europe, with brave British spies fighting evil German spies on trains crossing at high speed the continent at dark. The trains were a symbol of the world and its conflicts with all their intensity and dramatism. Here the train also becomes the symbol of the first sparkles of the re-birth of Germany after war, of its might, of its obsession with order and regulation, of punctuality and civility. The characters that populate the train are far from being the classical spy stories good or bad guys. The principal character a young American of German origin coming to post-war Europe willing to be part of a process of help and reconciliation finds himself in an ambiguous world of destruction and corruption, with liberators looking more like oppressive occupiers, with the vanquished not resigned to their fate but rather willing to continue on the path of self-destruction, with love doubtfully mixed with treason.It is yet this classical film treatment that betrays the director in this case. The actions of the characters, especially of Leopold Kessler played by Jean-Marc Barr seem confused, and lack credibility. The overall cinematography seems to be not Hitchcock-like but rather from a bad imitation of Hitchcock in the late 30s. The usage of color over the black-and-white film used in the majority of the time in moments of emotional intensity is also too demonstrative. It is not that Van Trier does not master his artistic means, but he is too demonstrative, he seems to try too hard to show what a great filmmaker he is. He really is great, as he will show in some of his later films, but it will be left to the viewers to decide this alone.

... View More